


violent delights (have violent ends)

by fictorium



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Family Drama, Femslash, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Luhrmann style, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, Romeo and Juliet AU, Same-Sex Marriage, Shakespearean AU, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4385195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Swan Queen: the Romeo & Juliet AU.</p><p>For Capulets, read Charmings. The Montagues are taken up by the Mills. You'll find your own equivalents of Benvolio, Tybalt and Mercutio too. Mostly with a flavour of Luhrmann. </p><p>Some changes from the original play. Because queers die too often as it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Talk of suicide and suicidal thoughts appear in later chapters.

**Two households, both alike in dignity**   
**(In fair Storybrooke, where we lay our scene)**

 

* * *

 

_Storybrooke, Maine, has for the past few decades been a de facto holiday home to the fashionable and filthy rich of Manhattan society. Once a sleepy hamlet, a land grab started by the Mills family - yes, the family behind that multibillion dollar media corporation - in the early 80s was matched only by the Charmings’ attempt to buy up everything that the Mills hadn’t. Though at the time the Charmings were newcomers on the international stage, within a few years they were a media force to be reckoned with, exploiting new media at every opportunity to present themselves as the purported ethical choice._

_Long gone was the sleepy fishing village on the Maine coast, swallowed up by boutique hotels, sprawling white mansions and enough spas and beauty shops to paint and primp half of the East Coast. Meanwhile--_

“Enough,” Ruby snapped, striding across the restaurant floor to turn off the television recessed into the wall. Her four-inch heels clicked dangerously, the overhead lights reflecting in the shiny patent leather of her sandals. Above those she wore tight black jeans and a scooped top that left little to the imagination where its pale blue material failed to cover. “You want to sit here and listen to more stinking Mills’ propaganda?”

“It’s CNN,” Neal started to argue, plucking a cigarette from the pack in his front pocket. His Hawaiian shirt was gaudy and crumpled, clearly rescued from the laundry basket and put back on in a hurry that morning. It hid most of the stains on his white tank top, at least. “The Mills don’t own any of the public shares, and besides, it seemed to be blaming both sides--”

“So you didn’t hear the part where they said our ethical brand is a lie?” Ruby was pacing, the walls of her restaurant hemming her in like a caged prisoner on that hot summer’s day. Freshly returned from exile back home in Manhattan, at the insistence of almost every senior member of the Charming family, she was keen to rejoin the action. Her absence hadn’t reduced the tension, exactly, but it had halved the number of brawls breaking out all over town. “You missed the part where they basically called us punks on national television? All the while they’re blowing smoke up Henry--”

“--Mills!” Elsa interrupted, knocking her iced tea (spiked with a generous splash of whatever was in her hip flask that week) across the table as she pointed towards the street. The drink narrowly avoided soaking her blue sundress, but she jumped back just in time. “I knew that car was slowing down to case the joint.”

Ruby snatched the cigarette from Neal the second he finished lighting it, not allowing him even the first drag. She was in place by the window before he could protest, teeth bared in almost a snarl as the souped-up muscle car revved outside the restaurant.

“Maybe you should have asked for a gig on the outskirts of town,” Elsa suggested in a quiet voice. “Clearly being here right on the Sheriff’s dividing line isn’t doing you any good, Rubes.”

“Spray paint,” she barked at Elsa, who hesitated only a moment before retrieving a new can from under the counter. It was a silver can containing the vivid royal blue paint of the Charming crest. The second the can was handed to Ruby, she made for the front door, jerking her head for her faithful lieutenants to follow.

“Well, well, well,” Ruby drawled, taking a long drag on her purloined cigarette and squinting up into the strengthening midday sun. She took her time about pulling a pair of aviators from her pocket, slipping them into place as the Mills car sat there revving, blacked-out windows betraying nothing but a reflection of the car’s blood red bodywork. “It seems our friends here have forgotten where their side of town is.”

Bending at the waist, she sprayed an almost completely straight line from just in front of the car’s fender, back through her own spread legs. Snapping back up with a flourish, she shook her head.

“You know, guys? I bet these stupid fucks can’t even see the line from up there. Let’s help them out some more, huh?”

She tossed the can to Neal and nodded towards the hood. His eyes widened at the deliberate provocation, and the sudden sweat on his brow suggested he was ready to chicken out. Ruby placed her hands on her hips and he swallowed, hard.

Stepping forward, he plastered a mocking grin on his face and leered through the windscreen at whichever Mills was unfortunate enough to be driving. With a precise but dramatic flourish, he replicated Ruby’s line first over the car’s paintwork and right up the middle of the windscreen. The hiss of the spray hadn’t even begun to fade when three of the four doors sprang open, spilling irate enemies into the street.

“You think you’re going to get away with this, Ruby?” Ursula roared as she rounded the front of the car to confront the taller woman. Her light-brown curls were piled up on top of her head, held in place by a sporty green headband that she bore as though it were a tiara. Her white dress made for a striking contrast against her dark skin, suggesting she had just come from her daily match at the tennis club; one of those semi-pros that would rather stay home and play for sponsorship than make a real career of the game.

“Yeah, you just bought yourself another two weeks back in the city. David Charming is going to ground your pathetic ass again. Over some kiddy vandalism, too.” Whale stood at Ursula’s side, his blond, spiky hair as overdone as everything else about him. While everyone else was dressed relatively casual for the early hour, he had poured himself unnecessarily into a pale linen suit that only washed him out even further.

“Hey!” Zelena was the last to join the fray, but the loudest and the first to reach for her purse, which no doubt contained one of her favored revolvers. The purse, naturally, matched her fashionable pink halter-neck top and tiny cardigan, with white shorts that barely covered the tops of her thighs. Her white strappy sandals were every bit as teetering and deadly as Ruby’s black ones, and neither was above using a stiletto heel to the jugular in order to make a highly effective point.

That a woman who carried no fewer than three separate weapons on a daily basis could be considered a peacemaker spoke volumes for Storybrooke, but Zelena was the closest thing they had. “We’ll move the car. And we’ll send you the bill for cleaning up the paintwork. This doesn’t have to get out of hand. A little peace, please.”

“Says the witch reaching for her piece right now,” Ruby stared her down from behind her dark glasses, not flinching even a little. “But peace? I hate the word. Just like I hate spoiled brats, the entire Mills family, and especially you.”

“Run along, Ruby,” Zelena sighed. “I really don’t have the time or patience for this.”

“Don’t worry, Z. I’m sure Cora will buy you a new car. Saves me spitting on the bill when you send it to me.”

“You mean Henry,” Whale corrected. “Henry Mills is the head of our family, and he’s twice the man your sheepfucker boss will ever be.”

Neal was the first to react, pulling his switchblade from his boot.

“Say that again, you slimy prick. I fucking dare you.”

Whale responded by pulling a Magnum from a holster under his blazer, and Ursula followed suit, only her .22 was clipped to some sort of near-invisible belt around her waist.

“This is ridiculous,” Zelena raised her voice again, but she was holding her gun in a death grip as she pleaded for calm. “Everyone just step away. There’s been enough trouble this summer, and you pigs aren’t going to blame it on us again.”

Which, apparently, was Elsa’s cue to let fly with the crossbow she had somehow hidden on her person the entire time. It punctured the metal beneath the gas tank with a creepy sort of precision, and she turned the bow on the waiting Mills troops as if to ask who wanted to be next. The three of them moved closer together, weapons raised.

Most people with experience of these street brawls would have expected Ruby to step up next. As a key enforcer and unofficial street-level leader of her people, she was never far from the thick of the action. At that moment, though, she seemed... distracted by staring down at the ground directly in front of her.

Neal picked up the proverbial baton, swooping in to threaten Whale with a few near-miss swipes of his knife. Whale stood his ground, moving only to click the safety off; that was enough to give Neal pause. It was then that Ruby’s source of distraction became clear, as she flicked her half-smoked cigarette through the air in a neat and almost perfect arc.

The ‘whoosh’ of ignition was so audible that it seemed to have been patched in by a television studio, but no one had time to dwell on that as they scrambled for safety. As the flames engulfed the car and most of a Mills’ owned shopfront in mere seconds, it seemed to be a siren call for SUVs and sports cars full of Charming and Mills-affiliated youth alike to come screeching into the once quiet street that was now effectively a gladiatorial arena.

“You’ll pay for this,” Zelena warned, gun aimed squarely at Ruby’s forehead as they stood barely a few feet clear of the rampaging flames. In the silhouette of the flames, they could be either demons or angels, their hair fluttering out behind them in the heat. It was little wonder that some opportunistic photojournalist from one side or the other caught the shot that would be plastered on every news channel by dinner, and the front page of most newspapers by the following morning; each side claiming it showed their own righteousness in the face of wanton misbehavior.

It was only a matter of moments before Sheriff Graham and his otherwise useless deputies rolled in to break up the worst of the fighting. Zelena and Ruby were hauled off in separate squad cars, labeled instigators while loudly protesting their innocence of anything but self-defense.

“We’ll just see what Mr. Charming has to say about all this, won’t we?” Graham sneered as he slammed the back door shut. “Could be time for a more permanent vacation, Ruby.”

“Get my lawyer,” Ruby snapped. “You’re not getting another word out of me until you do.”

***

The Mills lived four streets closer to the police station, and in the end that proved decisive in the race to proclaim their family’s innocence along with cries of police harassment. Eventually, Zelena was ushered in from the cells, tossed into a wobbly chair between Cora and Henry, her beloved aunt and uncle. The so-called peacemaker had been smart enough to use her time in solitude to exaggerate her injuries and rough treatment, cutting a pathetic figure for as long as it suited her to.

“Look at my poor niece,” Cora demanded. “She’s half-dead, thanks to your brutes.”

“Right,” Henry agreed, nodding like a bobblehead in the back of a car. “Unacceptable.”

“What’s _unacceptable_ ,” Graham retorted, “is the havoc you continue to wreak on this town. While we’re very grateful for the extra funding for riot gear, I can assure you we’d rather just not need it.”

“Why we should be singled out--” Cora began.

“I’ll be saying the exact same to the Charmings when they bail out Ruby,” Graham assured, his hands raised in a placating gesture. “So I’ll say to you now what else they’ll be hearing. This town can tolerate the madness no longer. One more brawl - might I remind you there have been three very bloody ones in as many weeks - and it won’t be the squabbling children put on trial. I’ll have your head, sir. And David Charming’s alongside it. _Do I make myself clear_?”

“Crystal,” Henry sighed. “If you’re quite done, I’d like to speak with my niece. We may well have a suit to file against your department.”

“Knock yourself out,” Graham grumbled. “I’ll need the room back in five.”

“Zelena,” Cora reached for her hand. “What were you thinking, starting this when there were witnesses?”

“What were you thinking starting something on that scale without bringing me along?” Henry groused. “I may be long in the tooth, but this fight is mine, girl.”

“I started nothing,” Zelena informed them, ignoring Henry's weak protestation as easily as Cora does. “Though I could have, the way they postured and preened.... Ruby herself was the one to vandalize my car, and they’ll pay for that, I assure you.”

“Pick another from the lot,” Cora insisted. “I’ll have one of the boys drive you when we’re done here. I won’t have you walking the streets while these _thugs_ are allowed to roam. Tell me… was Regina not in the fray, darling?”

“Regina?” Zelena grit her teeth at the mention of her younger cousin. Regina had always been the apple of her parents’ eye, and the reason Zelena would never be anything but second-best in their eyes. If they hadn’t managed to conceive a child, as had been rumored for such a long time, Zelena would have stood to inherit everything, and would have gratefully undertaken the grooming to run a corporation. Regina took that blessing and treated it like a millstone around her neck, complaining to any and all who would listen. “No, she was nowhere to be seen, dear aunt. Although this morning…”

“Yes?”

“I had trouble sleeping, as you know I sometimes do. I took myself for a walk down past the stables and saw her near there. Walking and sighing in the early morning dew. If she saw me, she made no indication that she had.”

“Ah, it’s not the first time,” Henry answered, with a conspiratorial wink. “Something is troubling our dear Regina, and when she is not wandering the grounds, she makes a prison of her bedroom.”

“And do you know what is bothering her so?” Zelena didn’t care too much for the answer, but any leverage could well come in useful.

“No,” Cora replied, her tone just short of bitter. “Regina leaves no clues, and speaking to her about it? Her eyes glaze over and we might as well not be there.”

“Ah, there she is,” Zelena nodded towards the holding area, where Regina found herself greeted by close friends and family alike. “I’ll speak with her. And I’ll find out what this problem is, you see if I don’t.”

“We’d appreciate that.” Henry looked to his wife. “Now please, niece. Remember what the good Sheriff has told us today. No more flare ups, at least not in the coming days. Yes?”

“Of course.”

The elder Mills took their leave by way of the emergency exit, too tired no doubt for anything but a short walk to their town car. Zelena felt a pang of pity for a moment, before fixing her mental crosshairs on her dear cousin once more. She would discover and solve yet another problem for them all, and perhaps along the way accidentally prove her true worth.

“Cuz!” She called across the room, leaving the Sheriff’s office open to any who might see fit to raid it. “What time do you call this?”

“I don’t know,” Regina answered, her expression morose once more after the barrage of greetings from all the Mills’ people around her. “These days I don’t care much for what the clock has to say.”

“How melodramatic of you,” Zelena purred. “But it sounds like something a large cocktail and a trip to the firing range will help. You in?”

“I’d rather ride than shoot, honestly,” Regina replied. She’s certainly dressed for the stables, in tight black jeans and an oversized plaid shirt tucked into them. Distracted or not, Regina had still seen fit to leave a neckline that could only be described as ‘plunging’, the black lace of her camisole plainly visible. Her riding boots shone in that dull way of leather well-worn but looked after. For a moment, Zelena missed the fields that she’d effectively traded for the streets. “But Rocinante is being re-shoed today. I think your idea might be the better one.”

“Just let me collect my babies from the property sergeant.” Zelena looked around, seeing three or four of her kinsmen already crowding the overworked office. “You never know what else he might have lying around, you know, as a little souvenir?”

“Only you would steal guns from a police station,” Regina groaned. “I’ll be waiting outside, cousin.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m here to see Mr. Charming?” The sheer entitlement in the voice dripped from every syllable, and David felt his teeth set on edge. Though he commanded an empire now, he had risen from the humblest of beginnings, and one truth that had lasted through the years was his lack of patience with spoiled brats. This one had the indecency to be acting like some sort of quasi-English noble on top of that; the product of another overpriced boarding school. With the recent trip to be scolded by a two-bit Sheriff, David found himself in a far from amicable mood for receiving guests, least of all a suitor for the hand of his only daughter.

“Show him in, Leroy,” David announced, taking a seat behind his impressive desk. Hewn from the timbers of a once great warship, it dominated the open space of his home office, and many an employee or relative had trembled on the other side of it. Killian Jones, brother of the Governor of New York, took one look at it and seemed to dismiss it entirely. That alone caused a spike in David’s fragile temper.

“At last we meet,” Jones said, mocking with a quick bow. He took a seat before being asked, kicking his biker boots up on the front edge of David’s desk. Having forsworn the formal business attire most men adopted after a certain age, David could only assume Jones thought himself rakishly charming in clothes that owed far too much to leather and chains to be appropriate. That they were no doubt the finest leather and silver that money could buy did nothing to appease. “I did hope we’d manage it before your charming little soirée.”  
“You mean the fundraiser tonight? For your brother?”

“The very one. It seems as good a time as any to formally arrange that union between me and your daughter.”

“Emma has not yet consented to any such arrangement. The very mention of an engagement sends her hurtling towards the fields all day. We’ll have to approach more carefully, if we are to proceed at all.”

“You have a better offer for the girl? Her beauty is a mythical thing amongst we city bachelors, but there’s more than one tale of her troubled temperament. I doubt you’ll do better than a family such as mine. Particularly since my father’s next run for office will be that big white one on Pennsylvania Avenue, you understand?”

“I’d heard whispers,” David admitted. “While I support the match, for these reasons and more besides, the proof will be in the pudding, Mr. Jones. Meet with my daughter tonight, and when the sparks fly as we’re all sure they will, nudging her towards a formal announcement won’t be hard.”

“There speaks a man who knows how to negotiate,” Jones kissed ass with all the subtlety of a dying guppy, but David took it in stride. The sleaze made his eventual fate, if grumpy old psychics were to be trusted, a little more deserved. That the fool didn’t wonder that Emma remained unmarried this long spoke volumes. “If there’s anything I can do to help with this Mills problem...”

“That won’t be necessary.” David stood, feeling a need for his first Scotch of the day. “I wouldn’t want to compromise your impartiality.”

“Of course.” Jones turned towards the exit, but not before adding a needless and overblown wink to the conversation. “I’ll see you tonight, good sir.”

￼“Until then.” Waiting for the door to click closed, David sighed heartily before moving once more to top up his drink.

***

“Daaa-amn,” Zelena appended her remark with a low whistle as she pulled Regina’s hapless target paper from the hook. A good eye and practice counted for plenty, as Zelena’s own shots proved. Regina, though, her talent bordered on the uncanny. “Even this distracted, you have a deadly shot.”

“Mother would accept nothing less.”

“That much is true. But what’s upsetting you so, Regina? You’ve always been more like a sister to me than simply a cousin. You know by now you can tell me anything, surely?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear it. I barely want to say it, it’s so mortifying.” Regina reloaded her Glock, nodding for Zelena to send the cable back with a fresh target in place.

“What could embarrass you?” Zelena teased. “Queen in all but name, but then actually in name, too. Heiress to a fortune that would make grown men grovel at your feet. And I don’t know if you’ve passed any mirrors lately, but you wouldn’t crack them. I think you probably know that, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do. But it doesn’t matter how I look, if I can’t catch the eye of the one person who matters.”

“You have a crush!” Zelena practically squealed in delight. She’d been imagining insurmountable obstacles: addiction, betrayal, perhaps even terminal illness. Something so easily remedied will have her back in Cora’s good graces before sundown. Whichever hapless employee of Mills’ estates had caught Regina’s fussy eye would be strong-armed into a romantic dinner before the week was out. Zelena was so busy scheming that she almost missed the rest of Regina’s sad diatribe.

“A crush is for children, Zelena. I’m talking about true love. The stuff magic is made of. Oh, trust me, I didn’t believe any of that either. Then I saw him.”

“And who is he? Don’t tell me, it’s Robin from the security staff, isn’t it? You always seem happier when he’s on your detail.”

“That forest rat?” Regina looked repulsed. “He’s perfectly nice, in a dull sort of way. It’s only because he’s too hapless to hit on me like all those other testosterone-fuelled morons that I can stand him at all. He smells like wet leaves all the time. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Perhaps his room here is damp? If you loved him, cuz, you’d report it to maintenance.” “Shut up, Z.”

“Oh, I think we both know that’s not happening until I get a name.”

“He’s not... well, he’s not technically one of us. If you know what I mean.” Regina pulled at her collar with considerable unease. “He’s one of the few remaining neutrals in town, and that’s how I know he’ll never look my way.”

“That is a short list indeed,” Zelena mused. “So not anyone who went to boarding school with either of us? And he’s never worked for your father?”

￼“No, and no,” Regina fired another volley: head, heart, heart and head. For good measure, she stuck her fifth bullet right in the centre of the fake paper heart, before shaking her head. “If I do tell, you must keep my confidence. If Mother hears, she’ll marry me off to the first eligible VP she can find.”

“It can’t be Jefferson,” Zelena began to work out the puzzle. “As a genuine local with no loyalties to either family, he qualifies. But he’s your closest friend, and, if I read things right, not interested even in women as attractive as you.”

“He has... passing fancies.” Regina looked resolutely at her feet, blushing furiously.

“Well, a girl needs to practice somewhere,” Zelena teased. “Archie Hopper is... no, not even on your most insane day would you go there. Which, around our age really only leaves...”

“Daniel,” Regina admitted. “From the stables. The town stables I mean. I took Rocinante to him today. Our stable boy will be furious when he finds out.”

“While you were talking about the sexy business of horseshoes, cuz, did you happen to flirt a little? Express your interest? Perhaps even slip him your secret cell number?”

“Well, I gave him my number. In case there was any trouble with Rocinante.”

Zelena groaned. “Cuz, you’ll be a spinster at this rate. I’m coming back with you later, to give you two a nudge together.”

“I told you, Mother won’t approve.”

“You’d be surprised what she’ll put up with. It keeps you safe, after all. No Charming is going to start a fight with a neutral.”

“Ms Mills?” A messenger appeared at the benches behind their booths. “Uh, shouldn’t you be wearing the ear protectors?”

“Do you work here?” Regina snapped, the flash of her teeth far removed from anything like a smile. Zelena grinned at the momentary threat, pleased her cousin’s natural bloodlust hadn’t disappeared altogether.

“No, I uh... I was looking for Jefferson, and I was told he’s usually with you.”

“Not today,” Regina gestured around her, where the rest of the range was all but deserted. “Although he does enjoy a stint in drag, my dear friend. Perhaps we should check this lady here isn’t simply him in disguise?”

“He does make a prettier girl than me,” Zelena sighed. “But no, I’m definitely not the much- maligned Jefferson. What message are you bringing him? We can just as easily pass it along.”

“I’m not really supposed to--”

“Do you really want more work than is necessary?” Regina countered, closing in on the shorter man as he practically trembled at her sheer presence. “So give me this little piece of paper,” she added, snatching it from his hand. “And you’re free to go.”

“Yes, ma’am. Madam. Uh, Ms Mills.” The courier was gone before she could unfold the envelope.

“How... interesting.” Regina looked up at her cousin, mischief glinting in her eyes. “This is ￼Jefferson’s invite to the Charming fundraiser tonight. And a list of other expected attendees is right there behind it, just to reassure his neutral soul.”

“To soothe a neutral?” Zelena’s laugh bordered on a cackle. “Well, that’s a more promising way to get you and Daniel together. Have Jefferson haul him from the party, and we’ll take it from there.”

“No, cuz,” Regina corrected, tutting with impatience. “This invitation is for 'Jefferson and friends'. And surely, if nothing else, we’re friends of Jefferson?”

“You’re not suggesting...?”

“Those snotty Charmings have the absolute worst security when it comes to eating, drinking and being merry. Besides, if I meet Daniel there he’ll assume I’m a peacemaker. Unlike all of you. It can only work in my favor.”

“Your scheming will get you in trouble one day, Regina.” “I can only hope so, Z.”

***

“Granny!” Mary Margaret’s voice bounced off the marble of the house’s great entryway, stairs ascending in countless directions to different parts of the house. Though their home in Manhattan had passed through generations of her family, looking down on Central Park with old money imperiousness, this new build in Storybrooke was her favorite place in the world. Admittedly, the effect was marred somewhat by the entrance maze of concrete blocks to deter car bombs, but the high barbed wire fences became part of the background before long. Here, Mary Margaret could breathe. Here, her husband still had time to love her, to call her beautiful with unwavering conviction each day.  
Even if, these days, he seemed far more concerned with the affairs of their only daughter than with anything his wife might or might not do. Truthfully they had been concerned over Emma every day of her life, and a few before she came into the world, at that. Mary Margaret pressed her fingers to her temples, intent on blocking out old worries on a day that held so much promise at long last.

“Granny!” She yelled once more, impatient that the old woman had chosen this busiest of days not to be constantly lurking at her elbow.

“Yes, Mrs. Charming,” Granny appeared at the top of the nearest staircase, affecting an exaggerated curtsey. “You bellowed?”

“Where is my daughter? If the answer is ‘climbing a tree’ or anything else terrible, think very carefully before answering.”

“I’m here, Mother,” Emma sighed, emerging from a dark corner and shoving a knife into the side of her knee-high boot. “You could have called for me directly, you know.”

“And give the impression we don’t know your whereabouts? When enemies lurk in every corner? I don’t think so, Emma.”

“You worry too much,” Emma insisted. “Hardly anyone knows what I look like. You’ve kept me locked up like Rapunzel since I was a little girl.”

“Well, you are no longer a little girl,” Mary Margaret admitted. “In fact, I hear that tonight a very ￼eligible bachelor is intent on dancing with you and no one else.”

“Really?” Emma almost caught the snort of disbelief in time. “And since he hasn’t seen me, and doesn’t know me... I assume it’s my winning personality he’s interested in? Not my position as heiress to a big, stinking corporation?”

“You really shouldn’t refer to our lives’ work that way, Emma dear .”

“She hasn’t done a day of work in her life,” Granny pointed out. “But I’ve loved and cared for you since you were a squalling baby, my little swan. It would do my heart good to see you married, loved, and safe.”

“And marriage guarantees those things, does it?” Emma sassed, following her mother up to the family bedrooms. The majority of the west wing was given over to private dwelling, plenty of guest rooms for the assorted cousins, kinsmen and senior lieutenants who would stay for stretches of the Maine summer. “Only I notice your own granddaughter is yet to be wed, Granny. And she has, what, three summers on me?”

“And the winters to go with them,” Granny grumbled. “Ruby is a special case, my darling. There’s a wildness in her that I doubt any man will ever tame. You, on the other hand, have been raised to be a lady. Why, in Europe you would be a princess of sorts.”

“My daughter thinks well enough of herself without bringing royal titles into the equation,” Mary Margaret scolded. “Emma, darling. Will you be the girl we raised you to be tonight, and charm this fine young gentleman?”

“For the good of the company, or...?”

“Because finding true love will make you happy, dearest. I’ve been telling you that since you were just a baby.”

“I didn’t believe you then, either,” Emma muttered, earning a reproachful look from Granny. “Of course I’ll try my best, Mother. I can’t promise marriage and fat little babies, but I can promise to be pleasant... if I must.”

“Thank you,” Mary Margaret sighed in barely concealed relief. “Now, we must finish getting ready for tonight. Can’t have the Governor and his brother thinking we Charmings socialize in our pajamas with dirt under our fingernails, can we?”

“Wait, the man who wants my hand is the brother of Governor Jones?” Emma groaned. “You must know I crossed paths with the Governor during my internship? I can’t stand him. He’s a first- rate sleaze, and that’s the only first-rate thing about him. There’s no way his brother is any better.”

“You promised,” Mary Margaret chided in response. “You might surprise yourself, Emma.” “I’m not that easily surprised.”

“Still,” her mother was pleading now, the desperation apparent in her eyes. “Emma, I don’t want to pressure you. But you know your best hope is-”

“True love. To fix all that’s wrong with me?” Emma sighed. “If you spent more time asking what I actually want instead of trying to play out some tired old story, maybe I could...”

“Emma!” Mary Margaret snapped this time. “I know you can’t help these contrary impulses, but will you please accept that we know what’s best for you? Or do you want to spend the rest of your life trapped here or within ten blocks of the New York house? Don’t you want more than  
this?”

“I could have it,” Emma argued, the rage bubbling up fast enough to catch in her throat. She advanced on her mother, quite without meaning to. “It’s only because of you that I stick to this stupid protection.”

“Emma,” Granny interrupted, her tone soothing. “Come, let’s get you dressed. No knives required, my girl. Understood?”

“Fine,” Emma grunted. “Let’s get this sham over with.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Jefferson!” Regina shouted from the street below, the open apartment window her target. “Get your ass down here.”

There was a thudding of feet on the stairs and a moment later Jefferson opened the front door with his back to her, presenting said ass as requested. Said very pale and very naked ass, sending Regina into gales of laughter.

“Sheriff Boring will be along to arrest you for indecency,” Zelena teased, joining in the merriment for a change. “Do you want to call him or shall I?”

“Let him come,” Jefferson announced, his voice thick with sleep and no doubt the last vestiges of a hangover. “He won’t be able to concentrate with all this on display.” Turning around, uncaring of his continued exposure, he took in Regina and Zelena’s changed outfits. “Made ourselves some plans, ladies?”

“That’s where you come in,” Regina answered, letting herself in and smacking his ass on the way past for good measure. “Mr. Popular, you’ve been invited to a shindig at no less than the Charming compound. Who have you been kissing to get that nice piece of calligraphy?”

“I confirmed by email last week, but that’s a nice touch,” Jefferson admitted, snatching the crisp card from her hand. “If this is yet another misguided attempt to seduce me into your petty war, Regina Mills--”

“Not at all. In fact, I want you to be an ambassador. An emissary of peace in these troubled times.”

Jefferson rolled his eyes hard enough to lose his balance, stumbling into a low table before finally taking a seat on the couch and covering his private parts with a cushion. “Wow, you’ve been at the Kool-Aid again. Mommy write that little fib for you, or...?”

“I mean it,” Regina snapped. “Cuz, back me up on this, would you?”

“I’m still half-blind from the things my eyes have been subjected to,” Zelena groused. “But Regina isn’t lying, and you know my main goal in life is to keep the peace.”

“Uh, unless Ruby is within a country mile of you. Then all bets are off.” Jefferson preened at having made such an undeniable point. “You can’t seriously be all glammed up to crash the Charmings, ladies.”

“We are,” Zelena confirmed. “Regina here has a bad case of lovesickness. And only flirting with a stable boy can cure her. A neutral stable boy, invited just like your good self, Jefferson.”

“You didn’t say sex was involved!” Jefferson leapt from the sofa, scurrying towards his bedroom. “I’ll find something with sequins. I’ll introduce you, you’ll be married and pregnant by midnight. Or at least you’ll both wander into an orgy. I guarantee it.”

“That is not what I want,” Regina protested, but her hopelessness was giving way to something like a sense of purpose. “I simply want to spend time with him, without all the weight of Mills, Inc. hovering over me like a shadow.”

“A creepy-ass shadow,” Jefferson agreed. “No matter, I can make it happen. You’ll have a drink.” He clicked his fingers, directing Zelena towards the kitchen. “Vodka’s in the freezer. And there’s

a special something in that tin, there.”

Regina picked up the trinket box on the table, opening the lid with some trepidation. Jefferson had always proven too wild for her, and sure enough there’s enough coke stashed away to buy a decent chunk of Colombia.

“I’ll stick to vodka. I’m no use to anyone until I can see him, anyway.”

“You managed to pour yourself into that suggestion of a dress,” Jefferson called out, rustling around in his room. “And your make-up suggests your inner vamp is alive and well. So what’s wrong with you? What’s this great big crush doing to you?”

“I can’t sleep. I barely have an appetite. Everything else I’m supposed to care about sounds like radio static. You know, the usual.” Regina unburdened herself to Jefferson, feeling a little guilt that she hadn’t entrusted as much to Zelena. Her cousin was a confidante, a constant presence or shoulder to cry on. Only every so often Mother seemed to know something she shouldn’t possibly be aware of, and while it could be considered rude to suspect those closest to you, Regina knew better than to ever let her guard all the way down.

“It’s only a matter of hours until you see him,” Zelena said, offering a drink. “I think you can survive that long?”

“In this world, perhaps,” Jefferson dashed from the bedroom, clad only in leather pants and smoky eye makeup. “But in others they’ve already met and married and had some fat little babies. In others still, lands with Queens and dragons, they’ve been torn apart: a lovers’ tragedy to warn the children with.”

“How philosophical--” Zelena interrupted, but Jefferson would not be quieted.

“I’m a cautionary tale, you know. This famed neutrality of mine... did I ever tell you girls about the week your mother had me locked in the compound, Regina? You were away then. School, probably. She wanted me to spy. Threatened me with everything. A regular Queen of Hearts intent on getting her way.”

“She did no such thing,” Regina scoffed, even though her stomach sank. She’d heard this same confession from Jefferson before, though he couldn’t know it was a response to Regina almost sharing her deepest secret with him. She hadn’t, in the end, but Mother’s paranoia rang long and deep. “Exactly what have you taken already?”

“A pill here, a drink there.” Jefferson laughed without a scrap of mirth. “I’m still a prisoner in this town. You all retreat to New York in the winter and leave us freezing here, clearing up the burned wreckage of your war.”

“You’ve never cleaned a day in your life.” Zelena was unimpressed, standing to pour herself another drink. “Time for a downer, Jeffy boy. You’re going to work yourself up into a panic.”

“I don’t take orders from you!” Jefferson sprang across the room after Zelena, but Regina jumped in to stop him.

“Hey, easy. Easy, Jefferson.” “Regina? We’re going dancing.”

“Yes, dear heart,” Regina soothed him, stroking his hair despite the gallons of product in it. “You’ll have to dance for me tonight, I have feet of clay the way I’m feeling. But we’ll have fun at the Charmings’. And nobody will rope you into any trouble. I swear.”

“You swear?”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Me too,” Zelena added, at Regina’s silent urging. “Have a drink, here. We’ll go in a minute.”

“Gotta get Regina laid,” Jefferson sighed, his usual level of melodrama restored. “And maybe myself, too. I’m not a monk, after all.”

***

The Charmings’ security was as light as Regina predicted. Many times she had scoped out various events for Father, slinking around town in borrowed cars with Zelena or Ursula, refusing point blank to ever be alone with Whale. The costume element of the party allowed them to hide behind the flimsiest of disguises, Regina teaming her black halter-neck dress with a black cat mask over her eyes. Zelena, by contrast, wore a silver one on her face that reflected the silver of her strapless little number, and as predicted the guards spent far too long looking at exposed skin to notice their faces at all.

Jefferson, still shirtless, simply danced his way through and nobody moved to stop him.

The throng was impressive, Regina had to concede. Plenty of New York guests who’d made a weekend of it, fawning over the Governor’s family and the Charmings alike. The buzz in the security line was that the whole Charming clan would be on display for a change, including their son... or was it daughter? Regina found she couldn’t quite recall. Although they were roughly of an age, she had yet to come face-to-face with this next generation of Charming. She wasn’t sure if there was one or two of them, in fact.

At first she simply reveled in her small victory, stalking the halls of the Charming mansion undetected, and the metallic bite of danger under her tongue blended perfectly with the vodka already thrumming in her veins. Despite the assembled masses, the glass and metal of the building left her cold, nothing about it to suggest a home; perhaps, like their own mansion, the Charmings kept warm touches only to the private quarters. Neither family could risk being too welcoming.

Zelena hung back, more comfortable in the shadows. Her red hair risked being recognizable in its own right, no matter how tamed and clipped up she wore it. Jefferson, his dark moment forgotten, was already in the midst of the dancing, dragging everyone attractive he passed up with him. Daniel, Regina smiled to see, was one of the first. Even if he did dance like a puppet with uncoordinated strings.

As she relaxed, snatching a glass of champagne from a passing server, Regina thought to look up and scan the balconies. A few poorly-disguised security men wore matching costumes that held plenty of weapons. Only when Regina finished counting them did she notice the glimpse of blonde in the corner nearest to her.

It took a moment to adjust, her peripheral vision slightly obscured by the eyeholes in her mask, but Regina felt her mouth go dry as she took in the beautiful girl with the incredibly lonely smile. No mask obscured her features, just the occasional, errant blonde curl that was tossed or blown out of her face with practiced ease. Though her dress was white, her skin seemed to sparkle when it caught the light. The boredom though, that Regina recognized right away, and she began plotting a safe course across the room, wondering if there might be a less exposed staircase to make her way up to meet this girl.

“Excuse me,” she snapped at some dancing idiot in her path. When he turned, revealing himself to be Daniel, Regina was surprised to find that her heart did not skip a beat.

“I know that voice,” he said happily. “But, wait...”

Regina lifted her mask for a brief second, anything to shut him up. She’d planned a secluded corner and a dramatic reveal that led to a kiss, but the flicker of disgust on Daniel’s unguarded features proved that all her plotting was for nothing.

“What are you doing here?” He hissed. “This is supposed to be a party. If you’re here to start another battle--”

“I don’t do that,” Regina lied. “Anymore,” she added, to add at least a veneer of truth. “I actually came in peace, believe it or not.”

“I’m not sure I do believe it. I suppose your henchmen are waiting to storm the place?”

“When did you get such a low opinion of me?” Regina wondered out loud, her former infatuation crumbling into no more than grains of sand, ready to blow away in the slightest breeze. An edge crept into her words. “It certainly wasn’t when you were taking my money for Rocinante.”

“He’s a magnificent horse,” Daniel agreed, awkwardness in every inch of his posture. Once again, Regina bit back the temper that could expose her.

“Just a shame about the owner, hmm? Well, don’t worry. The evil Mills girl will keep her equine care in-house from now on.”

“No, wait, I--”

“Goodbye, Daniel. There’s someone else I have to see.” Regina pushed past him, not caring about the ripples it sent through a small section of the crowd. Her mask and the collective lack of imagination meant no one else would discover her identity. Which gave her as long as she wanted to meet this mysterious blonde.

Who had disappeared from her quiet corner, much to Regina’s dismay.

***

Daniel, unfortunately for Regina, was not the only one who’d caught a glimpse of her without her mask. Life of the party as always, Ruby had been mere feet away and right in the sightline for the exposed face of an unexpected interloper.

She reached immediately for the pistol tucked into the back of her miniskirt, tracking Regina’s movements across the floor in the hope of unmasking her and teaching the Mills bitch the Charming protocol for uninvited enemies. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, since the Mills kept their heiress almost as sequestered as Emma. Ruby’s darting movements caught the eye of her uncle, and it took no more than a glance for David to see the trouble in her eyes.

“Ru-by.” Just her name, two syllables drawn out in his deep voice, was warning enough. “You have trouble in your eye. Haven’t we had enough for one day?”

“Yes, but David--”  
“I don’t care what you think needs doing. Graham was serious this afternoon.”

“Pfft,” Ruby mocked. “That two-bit dogcatcher can’t touch us. He never could. And there is a goddamned Mills--”

“The law changed,” David barked. “I spoke with our lawyers today and there’s a chance this organized crime gambit could stick. I am not going to prison for life over a scuffle at a party.”

“No one said anything about bumping them off. Just roughing them up a little and reminding them which parts of town they should stick their noses into.” Ruby was indignant, straining to go after her quarry. “C’mon, isn’t this what you pay me for? The thought of one of them - hell, it’s probably more - invading our home like this? Doesn’t it make your blood boil?”

“Not as hot as yours, Ruby. So a Mills or two made it through the checks? We’ll fire a guard in the morning and make an example. But tonight, I have business with the Governor. And his son has business with Emma, so can you concentrate, for once, on having a good time instead of starting fires?”

“Fine.” Ruby grunted the word, although the order was anything but. “If they start anything, though...”

“Then I’ll take that sword off the wall and join you in the good fight,” David assured her. “One night of peace won’t kill us. And I’d trust your agreement more if you could stop your nostrils from flaring.”

Ruby took a long, deep breath and nodded at the man who had been the closest thing to a father figure in her life. “I’m calm. I swear.”

“Then you’ll give me that pistol. Until morning.” With a reluctance that went bone-deep, Ruby released it into his waiting palm. “It’s a party, dear girl. Forget these blood feuds for one night. Don’t we all deserve a little fun?”

“I suppose.” Ruby had visibly relaxed, but only a novice would trust that her temper had actually cooled. Sure enough, as David moved to rejoin the revellers, she scanned the crowd for her gatecrashing prey. When the Mills girl seemed to have disappeared, Ruby forced a smile onto her face and rejoined the dancing. Their paths would cross again, of that much she was already certain.

***

Emma found herself in front of a faintly greasy-looking man, one who bowed so dramatically that she almost looked around for the audience apparently giving him a standing ovation.

“Miss Charming, I presume?”

“Oh, wow,” Emma breathed as he preened in front of her. “That accent is hilarious! You watch a lot of Monty Python?”

“No? It’s uh, well, probably picked it up at boarding school, actually.” Emma gave him an appraising look; he looked far more likely to have picked up syphilis than that ridiculous Jack Sparrow drawl.

“My parents seemed very keen that I should meet you,” Emma told him with as much enthusiasm as she might tell the dentist which tooth needed to be pulled. “So, you know, we’ve done that.”

“But I must insist on a dance!” Killian came right back at her, his leer barely faltering. “It’s only polite, after all.”

“A dance, then.” Emma grimaced for a moment, the many years of lessons meaning she couldn’t break a few of his toes without drawing the wrath of her parents. Well, even professionals had to slip occasionally... One good stamp and she’d be free to retreat to her room. A verse and half a

chorus should be plenty long enough. With that logic to follow, she looked almost giddy as Jones pulled her to the dancefloor, pausing at the threshold to make sure most of the room would register their arrival.

Though most eyes turned to them, Emma felt the burning gaze from only one mysterious face. Partially obscured by a discreet mask, as most faces were, it was still striking enough to freeze Emma’s casually-drawn breath in the very pit of her lungs. It sparked something else in her, too. Something she’d sworn had laid dormant for a very long time, and the last of her secrets that her parents would want to see unleashed in the midst of this matchmaking.

Jones steered her through some stumbling steps, clucking impatiently under his breath until Emma started moving with the beat. Friends and family waved at Emma as each couple danced past, winking and generally trying to embarrass the crap out of her. Nodding now and then in acknowledgment, she found herself scanning the crowd for just one half-glimpsed black mask.

Time and again the masked face appeared amidst the throng, moving almost as quickly through the partygoers as Jones could turn Emma around the dancefloor. She paused at the sight of her parents, still far too fond of displaying their so-called epic love in public, only to be caught up again by a jerk of Jones’s hips and another fleeting glance of the woman in the mask.

Eventually they turned into a corner of the dancing area and Emma used the crowd to make her polite escape. Jones called something after her but she was already racing through the assembled bodies, using their tipsy stumbling to create a trail of obstacles behind her. Ruby had taught her well, even if leaving any kind of scene was the last thing Ruby ever wanted to do.

She made a show of heading towards the courtyard with its marble fountain feinting at the last minute into the shadows and letting herself into one of the cleaners' closets hidden behind a heavy curtain. Dodging buckets and sacks and bottles, she made it clear out the other door to the storage space and exited into a new throng that barely registered her arrival. A twist, a spin and a few swift steps later she was able to dart up the back stairs and only when she emerged into her mother's beloved sculpture room did Emma start to breathe normally again.

"Well, well, well," said a strange voice from a hidden corner. Emma's relaxation was short-lived as her breath caught in her throat. The lighting was down low, just a few soft spotlights over some of the more valuable pieces. She squinted towards her best guess at the direction of the voice, and was rewarded by a shift amongst the shadows, their blackness giving way to the masked woman in a little black dress. 


	4. Chapter 4

"You're not supposed to be in here," Emma announced, drawing herself up to her full height, spine as rigid as her father's. "We were told that guests shouldn't come upstairs."

"And yet here you are," the woman fired straight back, sounding bored. "Rule breakers can't be rule enforcers. That would be hypocritical, at best."

"Maybe I like hypocrisy. You know where you stand with a hypocrite," Emma pointed out, drawing ever closer to the woman still half-hidden by shadows. "The ones you can't trust are the ones who claim to be anything but."

"Cynical, for one so young."

"I suspect behind that mask you're not much older."

"Another rule you've broken: no mask."

"Are you here from the Party division of the Sheriff's office?" Emma snapped. "Only you seem pretty obsessed with what I should or shouldn't be doing. Perhaps I've decided the rules don't apply to me."

"Which means you're spoiled," the woman levelled her accusation with a wicked smirk. "Why am I not surprised, at a gathering like this? You should go back to dancing with rich playboys."

"And leave you to steal these valuables?"

The scoff in response set Emma's teeth on edge. "These gaudy things? I wouldn't clear space on my shelves for any of them."

"So really, it's you who is spoiled." Emma had never been comfortable with her wealth, and with the privileges it bestowed. More than that, she couldn't stand the selfish, reckless company it made her keep. "Don't let me keep you here with these tacky trinkets."

"Are you throwing me out?" The laugh that followed was mocking, but still melodic. It tugged at something inside Emma, when she should reject or fear it like some witch's cackle. Tipsy on champagne, and still a little high on the adrenaline of escaping her arranged date, she found herself slightly desperate to keep this stranger's company a while longer. "I'd like to see you try."

The hint of a threat sobered Emma for a moment, but only like a last gasp of breath before the full bloom of attraction exploded inside her chest. This woman, that attitude, that suggestion of a wicked figure in a clinging black dress, it suddenly became as clear as the most radiant crystal. Those boarding school years of feeling just a step behind the others, of wanting to continue the silly kissing games a few minutes longer than anyone else. The fact that eligible young men didn't just bore her, but actively repulsed her most of the time. Emma found herself laughing at nothing, nothing more than the revelation playing out in her head. The woman at the root of it simply stood watching, bemused.

"Can you still hear the music from downstairs?" Emma asked, advancing on her newfound discovery like a woman on a mission. The determination was enough to make Ms Mysterious step back into the shadows for a second, and Emma knew the upper hand when she saw it.

"Perhaps I can," came the answer.

"Then enough with playboys and boys in general, hmm?" Emma had never felt so bold, so sure of her words. Over the years she had been dragged out like a performing seal in front of business associates and school audiences alike, always expected to have the easy confidence and media presence of her parents. Only then did she finally feel capable of tapping that genetic vein. "Why don't we dance right here?"

“What on earth makes you think I’d want to dance with you?” That was supposed to be scornful, Emma can tell, but the way the breath catches in her throat gives the strange woman away completely.

“The fact that you could walk right past me and out that door, but you haven’t taken even a step in that direction.” Emma extended a hand, relieved that it didn’t tremble as much as she thought it might, and waited the interminable seconds for her stranger to take it. Just as she was about to withdraw, hopes dashed, strong fingers grasped her own. Emma expected buttery soft skin, one of the pampered daughters of some business type being the most likely identity behind the mask, but she’s pleased to feel the touch of an outdoorswoman, skin slightly dry and toughened like her own.

“You’re not much of a dancer,” the woman groaned after a few stumbling steps. “Please tell me there’s something else you’re better at?”

Emma had rarely seen the opportunity so effortlessly presented. Pulling her stranger close, wondering if she shouldn’t at least ask her name first, or tug that obscuring mask away, Emma opted for the one thing she’d always been complimented on. The first kiss was tentative, more than she intended, and their lips barely touched in that first ghost of a moment. Determined to do better, Emma pulled her hands free from their loose dancing positions and positioned them with some authority on the woman’s back. The next kiss had no such nervousness, and the sudden ferocity with which she was kissed back made Emma’s breath catch in her throat.

“Wow,” Emma breathed as they parted for a moment. “Now I really must ask-”

“Ladybug?” The door creaked open, but neither of them reacted in time to let the shadows claim them. Emma knew she wouldn’t escape Granny even in the darkness, anyway. The shock was enough to prevent her cringing at the childhood nickname, a way to keep Emma safe when she would lose herself in crowds.

“Not now, Granny,” Emma protested, but the stranger who kissed as beautifully as she looked, had already pulled away.

“Your mother is on a warpath, girl. I think it better you find her than let her stumble across you like this.” Before Emma could continue a protest, she felt a strong grip at her elbow, all but dragging her through the door. Granny stayed in the sculpture room, slamming the door in her charge’s face, and Emma wanted to stamp her foot and cry like a child at the sheer unfairness of it. Only the screech of her mother’s voice coming down the corridor made her leave the spot, vowing to return as soon as she explained that Killian Jones would not ever be her husband.

***

“You can come out, girl,” the ‘Granny’ woman barked. “Don’t make me come back there for you.”

“Who was she?” Regina blurted, seeing her chance of love trickle from her like grains of sand with every second the blonde woman stayed away. “Speak, you know who she is.”

“You kiss all the girls without asking names?” Granny teased, suddenly kind despite the very real gun visible at her hip. “Perhaps I should ask yours first, or take that mask of yours.”

“I must know,” Regina hated the pleading in her voice. She thought she’d kept it in check, even when faced with Mother’s rages now it rarely makes an appearance. “Please, if you care for her as I think you must, I only ask in a bid to make her happy.”

“And if I don’t? I suppose you’ll click your fingers and demand it of me any way? You have that air about you, girl, but I’m not your servant.”

“Then be servant to her,” Regina insisted. “Why does she fear her mother so?”

“She does not fear her mother, it’s simply that the lady of the house must be obeyed,” Granny relented with just enough information to set Regina reeling. “You know, mask or not I think I know that jawline, those dark eyes. But I would surely be mistaken, wouldn’t I?”

“You would,” Regina managed to get the words out although her throat felt too thick to swallow. “I’ll go. No trouble, I swear.”

“See to it that you keep that promise,” Granny warned, opening the door once more and stepping aside. “If you brought friends, I suggest you get them out now. These affairs get wilder at this hour. Masks have a way of coming off.”

Regina nodded in acknowledgment and took her leave by the back stairs. Some stroke of luck had her barreling into Zelena mere seconds after rejoining the dancefloor, and Jefferson was duly plucked from some kind of podium as they made their way towards the exit. Regina could indeed sense the change in the air, the polite chamber music from earlier having given way to something more primal. The roars of young men filled the hall and she shuddered at the sound, eager to be rid of it.

“I haven’t seen your Daniel,” Zelena teased as they exited into the cool Maine air. Around the grounds, lit torches flickered, and Regina found herself thinking more of hell than a party. “Did you have your wicked way with him, cuz?”

“Wicked is not my style,” Regina deflected the question. How could she saunter off into the night when the person who kissed her almost insensible waited inside these walls? How strange, after all these years, to have met the one person who might truly understand Regina’s life, albeit on the other side of the coin. That, even more than the kissing and the flirting, not to mention the adorably disastrous dancing, seized Regina’s attention like nothing else ever had. She had to see Emma Charming again, and leaving this compound in that moment would make it impossible.

She slowed her steps, letting Zelena and Jefferson stumble down the path ahead of her, practically holding each other up. Finding a handy tree beyond the torches, Regina darted behind it, glad of her dark clothing and continued security of the mask. She felt a momentary panic as Ruby, unmistakable in a blood red ensemble, seemed to follow Zelena and Jefferson. But they were allowed to slip through the gate unmolested, and Regina heaved a quiet sigh of relief. Only then did they realize she had taken her leave, and she hoped they’d have the wasted good sense not to call for her by name as they looked around for her in the parking lot. The rule had always been to get yourself out, after all. Now and then Zelena might interfere on Mother’s behalf, but Regina knew better than to mistake that for genuine caring.

She held her breath and scouted the landscape as best she could in the dark. if the Charmings were anything like Mother, the private quarters would be in the most protected part of the estate. Luckily for Regina, she had more than a little experience in sneaking her way out. Surely it couldn’t be so very much harder to find a way in?

***

“Tell me,” Emma demanded, rounding on Granny the moment her mother left her private sitting room. “You know who the girl in the mask is, and I’ve already decided I’ll have her before any of these morons my mother thinks will make me a princess.”

“Don’t be a brat,” Granny played for time, but Emma had been able to see through that act since she was in diapers. This was no time to play coy.

“Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“That’s why I’m loath to tell you, little Swan.”

“I am no little Swan,” Emma warned. “I am a woman, and I have a right to know who that woman was. The way you’re going on anyone would think she was a … wait, but she couldn’t be… Granny?”

“It would seem you’ve met the apple that hangs in your place, only on the Mills’ family tree,” Granny confessed at last. “I haven’t seen her since she was a child. Cora keeps her on a short leash.”

“Yet she made it to this party.”

“A wilful daughter. How unusual.” Granny’s tone was drier than sand, but Emma ignored it.

“Is she…”

“You never did learn to finish a thought,” Granny sighed. “Well, other than with your fists. Or your feet. Run away from this one, Emma. That’s my advice to you. Chasing a Mills might seem like the forbidden fruit right now, but you’re not the girl to break your parents’ hearts. Save when it comes to marriage proposals, at least.”

“No one ever died of a broken heart, Granny,” Emma scolded. “You sound too much like my mother when you start all that.”

“Will you come back to the party?”

“I’ve danced with enough trouble tonight, don’t you think?”

“Aye, perhaps you have. To bed with you. Mind you close those windows, or you’ll be awake half the night.”

“Goodnight.” Emma was still somehow awkward in her affections, despite, or perhaps because of the ease with which her parents and Granny had always handled her. Frequently their easy hugs and kisses felt too much for Emma, but she kissed Granny’s cheek to seal their bond on the night’s little secret.

Too restless for sleep, she crossed to the windows of her room. The noise from the party was merely an echo as she stepped out onto her private balcony.

***

Regina surveyed the trellis on the wall from her hiding place in the shadows, contemplating her brand new pair of Manolos and wondering if it would be worth the sacrifice. They certainly wouldn’t be worth the climb, assuming she didn’t set off a flurry of alarms anyway, and barefoot seemed her best bet of maintaining a grip. Assuming, of course, that this secluded courtyard was overlooked by the bedroom of the Charming heir. It’s exactly where Mother would have put Regina’s room in a building like this. Which meant nothing, and could lead to Regina delivering herself to David Charming, or worse that savage Ruby who liked to antagonize Zelena so much.

Regina had all but talked herself out of the folly when a light finally came on within. She held her breath, edging closer to hear the murmured voices, but could confirm little beyond the fact that one of the voices sounded young enough to be the newest object of her obsession. No. She shook her head at herself. Daniel was an obsession, a crush run amok. This was different. It had to be.

Why else would she wander into the belly of the beast, seeking out the one person sure to be at the very, very end of any list of suitable partners her parents might make? This wasn’t just the desire for a wild night, soon forgotten. Regina knew that passing fancy, and this feeling was something new entirely.

“A Mills,” came the sound to shatter the darkness a moment later. Regina’s guesses were well-founded. Perhaps this Charming’s life does mirror her own in more ways than one. “How in the hell did I end up making out with a Mills?”

“Idiot,” Regina sighed. The lack of discretion was startling. Surely there would be sentries on the roof, even during such merriment inside.

“Is someone there?” Emma demanded. “Don’t make me fetch my crossbow.”

“Crossbow?” Regina stepped out from the walled corner of the garden, her bared feet making no sound on the tiles around the modest pool. Simple, rectangular, it was clearly designed for training lengths and not for lounging. She was almost impressed, until the thought of her no longer mysterious blonde companion in a bikini crossed her mind, and that was distraction in its purest form. “I doubt you have the aim, Charming.”

“How the hell-”

“I’ve been evading our security for years. Why should yours be any more difficult?”

“One scream and they’ll be on you like wolves.”

“That’s not the kind of scream you have in mind, though. Is it?” Regina challenged, hands on her hips like some soap opera actress. “I wouldn’t have bothered sneaking in it was.”

“You know I basically hate you, not to mention everything you stand for, right?”

Regina sighed, her old weariness slinking back in like a persistent freezing fog. What price a whole evening unmarred by her name, by her heritage? What would she have given to be anyone else for a whole 12 hours, unguarded and unburdened? Instead she’d spent every day fighting off instant loathing or unearned loyalty, neither one of them pleasing her very much at all.

“I think you’re mistaking me for the rest of my family,” Regina ventured. “Be thankful I don’t assume the same of you, Emma.”

“You know my name, Regina. See? Not the only one who can do a little research.”

“Other people would have lapsed into sonnets about my beauty and wit by now, you know.”

“I think that kind of wooing should come from the one breaking into a private garden, don’t you?”

“Spoiled and lazy. What a combination,” Regina fired right back, feeling her blood fizz at the engagement of a worthy opponent. “It’s a little late for wooing when you’ve already kissed me, wouldn’t you say?”

“I was deceived,” Emma pointed out, not at all convincingly. “You could have been anyone, behind that mask. You’re still wearing it now.”

Regina raised her fingertips to the edge of it. Any last chance of denying this night ended with removing it. She hesitated, bravado failing her when she most needed it. There was a rustle from the foliage behind her, and she braced for an attack. When nothing burst forth, save the chirp of some kind of creature, she finally relented. Even at her most infuriating, Regina hadn’t been able to stop stealing glances at this Emma. Leaning on the balcony’s stone balustrade, blonde hair gleaming under security lights, she took Regina’s breath from her lungs at every fresh glance. It ws maddening, but Regina knew she had to have more, immediately.

“Fine,” she muttered, yanking the painted piece of wood away from her face, pulling some of her hair pins with it. She shook the rest out, feeling naked under Emma’s quietly stunned gaze. “Do you regret your kisses now, Emma?”

“No,” Emma confessed. “I’m trying to work out how to get you up here without tripping an alarm. The trellis, which I assume was your first guess, has trip wires hidden in the vines.”

“Naturally. I must recommend that extra step to my parents. It does beg the question what you’ve been getting up to, for yours to think that necessary. Is a suitor in your garden a nightly occurrence?”

“You are a suitor, then,” Emma confirmed, her smile widening. “I knew you had it bad for me, Mills.”

“I’m not in the habit of wooing other women,” Regina thought she should clarify, at least. “They have romanced me, on occasion. For you, I thought I might make an exception.”

“I think kissing a Charming would be exception enough, but thank you,” Emma sassed, pacing her balcony with growing frustration. “I don’t think we should risk bringing you in through the house…”

“I believe your dear Ruby knows that Mills have infiltrated your walls tonight,” Regina agreed.

“How many of you are there?”

“I’ll give no names.” Regina went straight on the defensive. Mother would have been proud, but for the situation. “Just one other. She left, you don’t need to run and tell tales.”

“Telling tales is for children. And I’m in no rush to tell them how I came by the information, am I?”

“I suppose not.”

“She? It must be that fiery cousin of yours, then. Why is it I see her everywhere, but never you?”

“I could ask the same of you and Ruby, but we know the answer. We’re the blood heirs, Emma. We must be protected. Anyone at a remove is expendable, a shield our parents put between us and the world.”

“My parents love Ruby like their own child,” Emma argued. “Though I can see where yours might struggle with Zima.”

“Zelena,” Regina corrected, with an impatient click of her tongue. “And I don’t know how you can call her fiery after Ruby’s latest stunt. They’re the soldiers, Emma. We’re the privileged little princesses who stay safe behind the lines. If you think anything else of it, perhaps you’re too naïve to keep my interest.”

“I’m not naïve,” Emma declared, hoisting herself to sit on the balustrade. “Hey, is that dress silk?”

“No, why?”

Her answer is a resounding splash from the pool, which soaks her from head to toe.

“You _animal_ ,” Regina gasped, her seductive look trashed in a watery instant. “What possessed you to-“

Emma silenced her by grabbing her legs and pulling Regina right into the water with her.

“They’ve always said putting this pool here was a mistake,” Emma admitted with a grin when they surfaced. She kissed Regina, thoroughly, interrupting any further yelling. “But practice makes perfect, right?”

“You,” Regina kissed her back, breathless and considerably less angry. “Are the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” came a low growl from what Regina could now see was a hidden doorway. “I thought I told you to go to bed, little swan.”

“Granny,” Emma groaned. “Give me five minutes, please?”

“I’ve served this family most of my life,” Granny reminded her. “The right thing for me to do is tell your parents right now and end this pointless little fling.”

“Don’t you dare,” Regina warned, heading for the pool’s edge to make her threat at closer quarters. Emma laid a hand on her shoulder, preventing her climb,

“It’s mutually assured destruction,” Emma said after a moment. “She can’t hurt me when she has just as much to lose as I do.”

“Unless Cora Mills sent her here to seduce you. This rumor about you and other girls has been persistent, child. Especially since Lilith.”

“Granny!” Emma protested, and Regina filed that away as an important question to ask if they ever managed to be alone again.

“I can assure you, my mother would die before she’d see me here like this,” Regina promised, knowing how true her words were by the pit of dread developing in her stomach.

“Give me these five minutes, please, and I’ll be a perfect daughter to my parents in the morning, I swear.” Emma pulled Regina closer, making her point quite plainly.

“See that you do,” Granny huffed after what felt like an eternity. “You mind my warnings next time, Mills girl.”

Regina didn’t dignify that with an answer.

“It’s exhausting,” Emma sighed when the door clicked closed again. “Never being alone, never having a minute to know your own mind. Please, tell me it’s this bad for you?”

“Worse,” Regina confessed. “Your parents at least seem to trust you enough to leave you alone. When I’m apart from mine, I’m surrounded by their spies. Every sigh, every drink, every half-expressed thought is reported back to them. The price of destiny, I suppose?”

“Destiny?” Emma was treading water for both of them, wrapping Regina in a tight embrace that left their faces barely inches apart. “What destiny?”

“We were born into all this,” Regina gestured with one hand, creating a series of splashes. “We can no sooner escape it than we can run off and join a convent.”

“I don’t think convents take people as good at kissing as you,” Emma teased, closing that tiny distance and taking another, surprisingly sweet, kiss.

“I’m saying,” Regina continued. “That we might steal tonight, or five minutes of it anyway, but a chance meeting like this doesn’t change anything. Our paths are predetermined, Emma. We’re prisoners, no matter how fancy the cells.”

“That’s bleak,” Emma answered, steering them through the rippling water. “But I guess you have a point. A depressing one, but a point all the same. I can sneak out, tell lies, engineer situations where it feels like freedom… but however far I run, they’re right on my heels. I keep saying when we’re back in New York I can make a break for it. There’s money, I can get to it, and I could go be a person instead of ruling some empire I don’t even care about.”

“Careful, not caring might affect the stock price,” Regina mocked. “Especially telling me about it.”

“Who would believe you?”

“Right. I keep thinking New York is the answer, too. From there I could go anywhere. London, Paris, some island in an ocean that I can’t even spell.” Regina had never confided this daydream out loud before. It left her feeling as giddy as the kisses had.

“They’d find you, though. Just like mine. Private detectives and those guys who track bail jumpers. The minute you contacted a friend, or spent money in the wrong place, they’d have you bundled up and on a plane before you could finish your drink.” Emma had caught some of Regina’s own melancholy. It made Regina want to give her anything to cheer her up once more.

“It’s not that I don’t love them,” Regina defended her family, as she had so tirelessly. “I don’t want to be in a position where I never see them again. But I can’t live out another 30 or 40 years of this feuding. Of being ferried everywhere like a UPS package. Of never talking to anyone my parents don’t approve of.”

“So you could run,” Emma summarized. “Or you could find a way to end the feud.”

“Yes, well, I was going to solve peace in the Middle East first, but it’ll be nice to have a task for after breakfast, too.”

“Bitchy,” Emma said through a laugh. “But fair.”

“What,” Regina knew she had to blurt it out before she lost her nerve. “If we found a way to do both?”

“End a vicious rivalry from a distance?” Emma replied, snorting in disbelief. “I think Sheriff Dumbass would have tried that by now, right?”

“He lacks the imagination.” Regina knew her plan was ludicrous, but she could feel the words almost bursting out of her. “I do not. I’m falling for you, ridiculous Emma Charming. It’s stupid, it’s far too soon, and I don’t even know you, not fully. But this is how I am. I love instantly and deeply, and it scares the hell out of lesser mortals.”

“Well, I’m not a lesser mortal, that much I do know.” Emma didn’t seem smug. She spoke with the surety of someone with a billion dollars and a private army at her disposal. “Tell me of your plan, Regina. How do we solve all our problems, and find a way to be together?”

***


	5. Chapter 5

Zelena came knocking, hangovers be damned, barely minutes after the sun had risen.

“Well, cuz,” she drawled, collapsing onto the chaise in Regina’s bedroom, scattering yesterday’s clothes everywhere. “You certainly gave me the slip last night. Did you get your stable boy after all?”

“I told you I didn’t,” Regina snapped. “And that’s the last we’ll speak of him. He has proven unworthy of my attentions.”

“Kissing up to the Charmings, hmm? Can’t say I blame you. There are fine men just lining up to ask for your hand.”

“Just as they are for Emma Charming, I suppose,” Regina interjected with as light a touch as she could manage after just two dream-spiked hours of sleep. “It never occurred to ask what we know of her. She’s my age, is she not?”

“I think you have almost a year on her. She’s at least five younger than me. Why in the world would you suddenly care?”

“Your talk of hand in marriage made me think on it,” Regina lied. “I wonder if we’re competing for the attentions of the same men. Surely the Charmings respect a healthy bank balance as much as Mother does.”

“Perhaps,” Zelena conceded. “It’s not my impression that they have Aunt Cora’s political drive, though. They got their fingers burned trying to drive us out of New York, remember? Well, it was before our time, almost. Their Charming Center for the Arts that never was. They would have destroyed so many Latino neighborhoods, and the Mills couldn’t stand for that, could we? It’s why we’ll never lose our grip in the city, even now.”

“Why, Z, I thought you were just in this for the cars and the clothes.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“Mother and Father would do well to appoint you the heir to the company,” Regina admitted, something she’s toyed with saying over the years. “I have no head for power, not beyond using it to get what I want.”

“I’ll be your second, Regina. As I always have been. Use my head when you need to.”

Regina crossed the room from where she’d been standing in front of Zelena, and took a seat on the wide window sill. Not for the first time she wished she had a balcony. After last night, the longing to find Emma calling up to her was close to unbearable.

“Don’t you ever get tired of the party line?” Regina sighed against the window pane, the glass cool against her aching head. “I won’t tell, Z, I really won’t. You don’t ever wake up and wish you were just some… normal person? No impressive family, no war, just regular worries. Like how to pay rent, or what to study at college.”

“Sounds dull,” Zelena grunted. “But you’ve always bitten the hand that feeds you. It makes me pretty crazy, cuz. If we’re being so painfully honest.”

“I don’t do it to make you… whatever it makes you,” Regina promised. “Can you cover for me this morning? I have to run a private errand.”

“I’ll take you.”

“No, this is… a little private revenge. And you’re too much on the Sheriff’s radar, trust me.”

“Daniel going to pay for his disinterest?”

“Something like that. I should shower, so if you wanted to go distract Mother…”

“Fine, but you owe me.” Zelena leveraged herself back to standing, shooting Regina a suspicious look. “You’re not up to anything you can’t handle, are you?”

“Of course not,” Regina scoffed. “I’m just reminding the world not to mess with Regina Mills.”

***

“I’m so pleased you decided to come to church, Emma,” her mother patted her hand with her gloved one, closing the distance between them in the backseat of the car. “Your father is too busy to come during the week, but I like to help with the flowers. It shows a sense of community.”

“Community, right.” Emma nodded along, scanning the streets outside their tinted windows for any sign of her newest, all-consuming interest. No sign, but a few Mills’ allies flipped off the car with its personalized Charming plates. Not for the first time, Emma wished her lifestyle could be less ostentatious.

“They turn on you quickly enough, no matter how much money you give to the causes,” Mom continued. “But it’s harder for them to treat you like the royals in ivory towers when you come amongst them every week. Much less ‘off with their heads’, you know?”

“Right,” Emma offered a weak smile as they pulled up outside the beautiful Italian chapel. “Is there a service this morning, or…?”

“We’ve missed that,” Mom replied with that tinkling little laugh. “But you can go to confession before helping me with the flowers if you like. The Friar likes to take confession in the vestry during the week. Go, find him. Give him my regards.”

Emma made her way into the church with her usual trepidation. Sure, no gargoyles had actually ever fallen on her head, but one way or another, these were really not her people. She’d been hoping to hear word from Regina by now, beyond the parting instruction to come to church sometime after ten. Which would have been fine, but for her mother’s almost-daily pilgrimage to arrange flowers or gossip. 

She ignored the holy water, and crossed the central aisle towards the priests’ private rooms off the side altar. The smell of incense hung in the air from morning mass, almost enough to make Emma gag. She was surprised to see the vestry door closed, in all her years of being dragged here, Father Archie had kept the door open as literally as he hoped metaphorically. She rapped on the solid pine with stiff knuckles, and found herself holding her breath until the hinges creaked open.

Instead of the tall, red-haired priest, Emma was greeted with her opposite number and would-be lover. The sight of Regina knocked Emma almost entirely off-balance, causing her to stumble into the room. Grabbing her and Frenching the hell out of her would be less than appropriate, but Emma found herself fighting the urge harder than she thought possible. Regina’s searing look suggested she felt much the same, and when she closed the door behind Emma, it felt a little like insurance.

“Emma, welcome,” Archie piped up from the high-backed leather chair over by the fireplace. In his traditional black shirt and pants, the only lightness in the white rectangle at the base of his throat, he looked a comforting presence. “Did you mother accompany you?”

“She’s dealing with the flowers,” Emma informed him, her throat dry and her words rasping. Regina, flitting around the room with enough nervous energy to power the lights in the chapel for a week, made a beeline for the pitcher of water and its glasses. Emma smiled gratefully at not having to ask, sipping her water before taking the seat that the Father motioned to. Instead of sitting separately, Regina joined her on the small sofa, the back of it draped with priests’ garments in dry-cleaning bags and lying loose.

“I told the Father what we propose.” Regina had no water of her own. “There won’t be a problem with getting the license. We can marry the same day, too. No waiver, unlike New York.”

“She doesn’t mess around, huh?” Emma offered a nervous grin, before draining her glass. “What do you think, Father? If I’m as crazy as her and go for it?”

“Marriage is not a dare,” Archie was clearly winding himself up for a lecture, but Regina raised a hand that silenced him. 

“Assume for a moment that we’re both adults and aware of the realities of this situation,” she sniped, and Emma was a little impressed. And a lot turned on. “You must also allow for the restraints our… positions place on us. Not for us the casual date or summer fling. Whatever contact we have with each other brings consequences, and to be taken seriously we must commit. Something no lawyer or enforcer can dispose of without a second thought. Do you understand, Father?”

“I see a lot of your mother in you, Regina.” That shut her up. Emma squeezed Regina’s hand in case comfort was required. Regina leaned into her looking pretty grateful. Score one for lonely only child intuition. “I was sad when you stopped coming to services.”

“We need to be able to trust you,” Emma took up the slack that the change in subject had already caused. “We’ll make the plans, if you’ll marry us here. Once the register is signed, they can’t stop us from being together.”

“Well,” Archie sucked some air in through his teeth. “There’s the small matter of consummation. Old-fashioned, I know.”

“Then after that they can’t touch us. We need one day, one night, and a willing officiant,” Regina continued right on with their crusade, and Emma was all the more impressed with every word out of her mouth. “We’ll head for the city afterwards, break the news from afar.”

“I should counsel you against this,” Archie stood then, pacing in the small room. He came to a halt at the fireplace, staring down into the ash from whenever it had last been lit. Months, judging by the summer that had just passed. A few days of sun and light remained, and Emma found herself itching to greet the fall as a married woman, perhaps something of a new woman altogether.

“Father?” She urged. He hadn’t said no. They had time to pay off some government stooge in Bangor if this didn’t pay off. 

“But yes, I can’t help feeling this is our chance. To end this feud, these countless, needless losses. It’s often said that a hero is one who recognizes the chance to change the world when it’s presented to them. Perhaps that’s what this little miracle is.”

Emma snorted at the rhetoric. She’d heard many such speeches in her life, and all they ever seemed to result in was more money in a Swiss bank account somewhere. That this priest thought himself the protagonist of the story was more amusing than offensive, and so she let it slide.

“If we come to you tomorrow, around four?”

“I have a friend who can bring the papers for you. Unless he tells me otherwise, I’ll agree to your plan, girls.”

“Ladies,” Regina corrected, standing and pulling Emma along with her. “Might we have the room for a few moments?”

“That’s hardly-”

“A few moments,” Regina insisted. “If nothing else, you should make sure the Lady Charming is out of sight so I can escape this little meeting.”

“Fine,” Archie sighed. “I’ll knock three times when it’s safe for you to leave.”

Emma watched him shuffle towards the door, every step seeming to take a decade. The moment the heavy wood closed again, the snick of the latch as loud as a bomb dropped in a room whose only noise was the sound of two breaths being held, Regina was on her. A woman starved, it seemed, or at thirsty at least to have her mouth on Emma’s.

“I thought he’d say no,” Regina murmured between brushes of their lips, her hands wandering beneath Emma’s shirt as she backed her against the wall. “I thought you might see sense and not show up. If you’d been five minutes later I might have choked the man.”

“Ohhh,” Emma sighed as Regina’s fingers reached the lace of her bra. She was suddenly glad of the hour she’d spent agonizing over clothes for a change. “It’s wrong that thinking you would is even hotter, right?”

“You tell me,” Regina whispered, her teeth suddenly pressing against the pulse point hammering in Emma’s neck. A threat, a promise, or just a damn good time, Emma wasn’t sure what she wanted it to be most. The three knocks at the door ruined her chances of finding out, and their collective groan was far louder than they should have allowed.

“I’ll go.” Regina didn’t look thrilled about it, but she composed herself far quicker than Emma knew she would be able to. “Four, tomorrow. Tell the Friar we’ll meet in here. The altar for St. Nicholas will serve us well, if I remember my catechism.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Emma shrugged. “It’s going to be a hell of a long time until tomorrow.”

“If you change your mind-”

“I won’t. I mean it. Crazy it might be, but I’m already crazy about you. And if we only last 20, 30 years before you divorce me, well. That’ll just have to do,” Emma teased. Truthfully she wasn’t sure she can be with anyone for longer than a few months, but this had been different from the first moment. Eyes meeting across a crowded ballroom should have been consigned to the romance novels that Granny denied ever reading, but that Emma had continued to find in her knitting bag and the glove compartments of the cars. 

“Four, then,” Regina took another leisurely kiss, despite Archie impatiently clearing his throat on the other side of the door. “And it’s your job to find us somewhere safe for the wedding night, dear.”

“What?”

“I arranged the wedding, didn’t I? Come along, Charming. Even you must be owed a favor. If that doesn’t work? Money and threats go a long way.”

“Oh, God.”

With that, Regina threw the door open and stalked off down the corridor like discretion was someone else’s problem. 

“Your mother, Miss Charming,” Archie began to explain. 

“Tell her I went home,” Emma interrupted. “I’ll send another car to wait for her. We’ll be back tomorrow, Regina and I,” she continued. “I hope I don’t have to mention again how important it is that you tell no one. No one, Father.”

“My word is my bond,” Archie assured her. “I treat all confidences as though under the confessional seal.”

“Good.” Emma had reached an exit, so she shook his hand and stepped back out into the warming sunshine. She couldn’t remember Storybrooke ever looking so pretty before. It had been little more than a picture postcard prison to her for years, but it seemed even the perpetually busted town clock had been repaired as well. _A new time indeed_ , she thought, before walking around to the waiting cars, pleased to see that Elsa had joined the security boys. 

“Emma!” She called out. “I heard you were at church and had to stop and see for myself.”

“Just keeping the mom happy,” Emma lied. 

“I heard you bagged yourself a Governor-by-proxy last night,” Elsa continued. “Isn’t she happy enough?”

“Speaking of him,” Emma cursed herself for doing it, but she hadn’t come up with anything better yet. “I was thinking of road-testing the boy Jones, if you follow my meaning? Trouble is I can’t get a moment’s privacy at home, and you know how everyone in town gossips…”

“Well, there’s my place!” Elsa couldn’t wait to offer, practically falling over the words. “You remember where I am, up on the mountain?”

“It’s a hill, but nice try,” Emma teased. “Would you mind giving it up for a night?”

“Anna has a sofa for me, I’m sure,” Elsa scoffed. “Or perhaps I should sleep in your bed? A blonde in the bed is the perfect alibi.”

“Hey, I’m still an adult. It’s not that I can’t be gone, it’s just I don’t want anyone asking me where. The perils of being a good girl.”

“Here’s my spare,” Elsa offered the key after rummaging around in her velvet purse. “I’ll make myself scarce from lunch tomorrow, until I hear otherwise. I’ll even change the sheets, if you promise not to break the bed with Mr. Leather Pants.”

“I’ll get it back to you,” Emma promised. “You’re a true friend.”

“I know.”

***

If Regina slept that night, it was not for longer than a few snatched minutes at a time. Despite the coolness of the evening, she paced her bedroom in bare feet, wishing she had a balcony like Emma’s. Or that Emma were with here. Or that she were with Emma. She drank some cider to calm herself, drifting into another failed attempt at sleep just before dawn, waking with a start when the day’s light broke.

For once, no one came looking for her. She went down to breakfast late, hoping to be left alone with the kitchen staff. As she settled to some eggs she could barely taste, Daddy came into the kitchens, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. 

“You know your mother prefers you to eat upstairs,” he reminded her. “But what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“I like to hear them talking in Spanish,” Regina confided. “I miss when you would talk to me, tell me stories.”

“Well, you know enough for business at least,” Daddy’s smile was rigid, and she felt bad instantly for bringing up the sore subject. Lack of sleep and low-level panic over her plans for the afternoon had made her careless with her words.

“Daddy?” She asked, as he made to leave. “Are you proud of me?”

“Oh, Regina.” He said the words so fondly she felt the tears prickle behind her eyes. For a brief, wonderful moment she thought she could tell him, confide to her dear father how she’d found both love and a solution to the feud he’d wanted no part in. They both knew that Mother had kept it going, taken a minor slight before their marriage and run with it until full-scale war erupted, but no one ever seemed to remember that anymore. “How could I be anything but proud? You’re the greatest achievement of my life, and you make me happier than everything else combined. I suppose I don’t tell you that enough, do I?”

Regina shook her head. “Zelena makes a better heir, I know…”

“Zelena tries too hard. She can’t lead when all she wants is power. Now you, mija. You have greatness within you. You’re going to make the big changes, when it’s your turn. I have every faith.”

“Thank you, Daddy.” He would be proud after the fact, Regina decided. This would be her first big change. She’d lead, out of love instead of hate. Maybe Emma was her destiny as much as everything else, but Regina couldn’t shake the feeling that choosing Emma was choosing a path of her own after all this time. 

“Do you want to come to the club this afternoon?” He asked. “We haven’t spent much time together lately.”

“I have plans. Sorry.”

“Another time,” he assured her. “Your mother is in the rose garden. If you were looking for her.” He left on that note, the unspoken implication of ‘looking to avoid her’ hanging in the air between them. Regina took one last pointless bite of her breakfast, before pushing her chair back from the low table. She had a dress to pick out, and not that much time to waste. It wasn’t every day a girl got married, after all.


	6. Chapter 6

Emma found herself kneeling in the front pew as four o’clock approached. It would wrinkle her dress, probably, the gauzy white fabric proving way more trouble than it had seemed when she unearthed it in her closet. Mom had been trying for years to get her to dress more like a suprisingly-tall fairy, but the moment Emma set eyes on the white satin and chiffon, its simple bodice and tiny, plain straps, she knew she had found the dress she’d change her life in. She’d removed her own jewelry, save for the silver circle on a chain her parents had given her the day she graduated high school. It signified that nothing ended, they’d said, and Emma had to believe that it was the case for her relationship with them. She’d end their feud, that could end, but she’d come back to them as she always had. 

The church hummed with that specific quasi-silent energy that Emma had mistaken for the presence of angels as a little girl. Now, older and ready to be wed, she recognized the crackling in the air as hundreds of years of belief, prayer and love, condensed into one stone building. These pillars held the memories of countless brides, grooms, parents and their children. Praying for luck, for love, for something a little better than life had given them so far. The tears shed in remembrance of people lost, the memories of them preserved in stone, marble and shining bronze. Emma might not have believed in God anymore, not anything tangible or specific, but she knew a room full of hope when she stepped into it.

Her own hope stepped through the side door by the altar to St. Nicholas, two full minutes after four. Regina, too, had opted for traditional white, but everywhere that Emma’s dress flowed, Regina’s clung almost sinfully. She held a cape in her hand clearly to cover the dress on the way there, but threw it over the end of Emma’s pew when their eyes met for the first time.

“You’re here,” Regina breathed.

“Did you expect anything less?”

“I have very little idea what you’re capable of, remember?” Regina teased, her hands restless with nothing to hold, which Emma remedied by handing her a small posy, gathered in the church garden not ten minutes beforehand. Impulsive, pretty, and interesting to the touch, just like the woman she handed them to.

“I think you already know,” Emma demurred. A quiet cough from the other side of the altar alerted them to the Friar’s presence, and with him stood a man in the suit that Emma didn’t recognize. From Regina’s sigh of relief, she understood he was a stranger to her too, thus meaning their little secret would have time to take root.

“Ladies?” The Friar asked quietly, looking to each of them in turn from the top of the three small steps at the altar. It was a clear invitation to speak, or forever hold their peace. Emma took her hand without the flowers and offered it to Regina, pleased that it hardly trembled at all. Regina took it with barely a moment’s hesitation, her palm dry and her grip reassuringly firm.

“Let’s get married,” Regina whispered, a last confidence between them as single women. “Because I look forward to finishing the job of wooing you, when all this is done.”

“The white dress makes me officially wooed, I would think,” Emma whispered back, and with a smile they stepped up to pledge their nascent, powerful love before law and at least the suggestion of God.

***

“Mills,” Ruby snarled, stepping out of her huge Dodge truck and reaching for the guns in her holsters. “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

“Step aside, Charming,” Regina spat, her stomach sinking. Had someone really sold them out so quickly? Despite her selfish reasons for wanting a wedding night, it was vital they had a chance to consummate the union. Annulment was too easy an option to leave on the table, not when divorce and murder went right alongside it. She pulled her cape closer around her, hiding the white of her dress. “I have no quarrel with you today.”

“I’ll give you a damn quarrel,” Ruby answered, advancing on Regina with enough menace to provoke even Jefferson into action. He’d come across her, lost in thought, a few blocks from the chapel, and fallen into step beside her as though they’d had a meeting planned. Usually the first to remove himself from these scenes, now he stepped between Regina and her latest adversary.

“What could you want with Regina, here?” He demanded. “We’re out to have fun this afternoon, Ruby. Nobody wants a fight.”

“You sneak into our house?” Ruby challenged, and Regina heaved a quick sigh of relief. A grudge from being spotted at the party she could handle. All that would come out anyway, with the announcement of the wedding. She just had to walk away from this and get to Emma, at that strange cabin up on the hill in the forest. Nobody knew they had married, save the Friar and the clerk who’d brought a register for them to sign. “You come to mock our celebrations and think you can walk out unscathed?”

“Clearly, I did,” Regina couldn’t resist biting back. “But that was another day, and today I wish you nothing but peace.”

“Cuz?” Zelena hopped out of her car across the street where she’d hastily parked but left the engine running. Regina hadn’t even noticed her approaching, but Storybrooke was too damn small at moments like these.

“You must have been with her,” Ruby turned her pistol on Zelena then, the other still on Regina. “We never see the sacred daughter, but everyone knows she can’t go piss without your protection.”

“Ruby, be careful what you say,” Zelena warned, pulling her own weapon from the pocket of a green blazer Regina hadn’t seen on her before. “We’re all on notice, no matter how much of an idiot the Sheriff is. You must have been told the same as I.”

“Some slights cannot be borne,” Ruby snapped. “I warned you, Z. I told you what my limit was, and you helped this bitch skip right across it.”

“What’s she talking about?” Jefferson seized on the hint of a secret. “Consorting with the enemies, were we?”

“We’re not here to talk about history,” Zelena snapped in turn, and Regina felt her jaw literally drop at the half-revelation. Oh, they would be talking about this later, wedding night or not. “Ruby, let my cousin pass and we’ll say no more about it.”

“Slipped off the leash, did she?” Ruby mocked, advancing on Zelena and seeming to forget Regina for a moment. Surveying the situation, Regina didn’t dare to risk the darting movement required for an effective run, and so she stayed close to the wall, Jefferson still shielding her. “Rumor has it that little Reggie’s twice the whore her momma is, so you can’t be expected to keep up.”

“You’re not going to let her say that, are you?” Regina expected the accusation from Zelena, who doubted her fighting ethic at the best of times, but that Jefferson had questioned her mettle stung much worse. He carried on, “I take no part in this fight, but Ruby Charming you go too far.”

“My name is not Charming,” Ruby choked, and Zelena looked more alarmed than Regina had ever seen her. “It’s Ruby Lucas, but I serve the Charmings all the same. Not these Mills, and I won’t rest until your whole poisonous nest of snakes has all the heads chopped off.”

“Coming to the party was not meant as an insult,” Regina started to explain. “You have to believe me that we came in peace, and you’ll see the results of that, soon.”

“Did you bring them, Jefferson?” Ruby moved from one target to another without skipping a beat. “Did you compromise your so-called neutrality, when everyone knows you’re Cora’s errand boy whenever your courage fails you?”

“It was my invitation to do with as I liked,” he snarled at her. Regina had never seen her fun-loving friend so angry. “If you want to keep away from the Mills, perhaps you should get out of a town not big enough for both of you.”

He pulled a knife from his left boot, and Regina couldn’t stop the gasp. What in hell was happening this day? Had everyone taken leave of their senses while she’d been marrying Emma? Jefferson had never been a fighter, in fact Regina had sustained more than a few bruises over the years in protecting him from those who saw only an easy target. 

“You threaten me?” Ruby bared her teeth, the smile distinctly predatory. In that moment, Regina could see what was about to happen, but nothing in her could speak or move to prevent it. “That makes you as bad as any Mills.”

She fired twice, once to the head and once to the heart. Jefferson was dead even before his knees buckled. His body slumped against Regina’s legs as he fell, blood from the messy exit wound on the crown of his head smearing blood on the white silk she’d worn so proudly. Ruby had the good sense to look a little startled, for all the violence and vandalism their families wrought, actual deaths were not so common. Zelena, of the three of them still standing, was the first to react.

“Regina! Car. Now.” Regina actually started to stumble in obedience, still in shock. When Jefferson fell the rest of the way to the hard ground when she moved, something jarred inside her. She looked at his sweet face, eyes cold and unseeing, his lips still parted for the next witty insult. Something dark gripped Regina inside her chest, the heart that had been overflowing with love less than an hour before seemed to turn to stone at the invisible pressure. 

Zelena’s car had the engine running. She could be gone in a moment, safe to find Emma and rant about Jefferson’s loss, or weep, or make more urgent plans to end this bloodshed once and for all. It was the perfect, tragic motivation, but Regina couldn’t hold on to that in the face of the desperate thirst she could feel rising in her throat. She needed revenge, and she needed it now. The pain of losing a true friend felt strong enough to break her in two, so she had to take some control back, she had to make Ruby hurt as she was hurting. Something had to stop this wave of sudden, unbearable grief.

As she passed Zelena, Regina stopped her half-walk, half-run and snatched the gun from Zelena’s hand without bothering with something so unnecessary as permission. Regina had made her decisions today, had become a woman in her own right, and no one was going to take anyone or anything from her ever again. She had a wife now, perhaps the start of a family that didn’t measure its bonds in dollars and relentless tests of loyalty. She would no longer hide behind the soldiers, behind her cousin, behind the friends who’d never asked to be part of this circus in the first place. 

The gun felt cool in her hand, despite Zelena’s previous grip on it, despite the heat of the afternoon sun. Muscle memory took over in the moment it took Regina to decide. There was no point in trying to make Ruby beg. She was too willing a martyr to her cause, and Regina had never understood quite why.

“You should have left the neutrals out of it,” Regina told her, judge, jury and in that moment, executioner. She aimed for Ruby’s heart with the precision of a surgeon and unloaded the remaining clip, six shots punctuated only the time it took to load the next cartridge in the chamber. Whether from shock, or sheer obstinancy, it took Ruby a long moment to crumple. Regina had dropped the gun to the tarmac, and it clattered against the ground before Ruby did.

“Regina.” 

Zelena’s voice was quiet, but Regina didn’t dare look at her face. The distinctive whoop of a police siren shattered the sudden silence that had followed. Regina had thought she would panic, but the adrenaline of the act was coursing through her. She stood, sweat prickling on her neck, and decided to let them take her. Zelena, apparently, had other ideas.

“Car,” she insisted again, dragging Regina by the hair, the pain shocking her into action. “Hide out somewhere, and don’t come out until morning. I’ll take the heat.” Zelena’s face was streaked with tears, and Regina wanted to understand why. The sirens were getting closer though, and the urge to bolt finally kicked in. 

“Zelena, I…”

“Go!” Zelena shut the door on her and hit the roof to hurry Regina along. With shaking hands, she put the car in gear and floored the gas pedal, screeching along the street past two prone bodies and skidding around the first corner. Regina hadn’t run from anyone in quite some time, but she knew the circular routes the drivers took to avoid running into trouble or forming a noticeable routine. It took agonizing minutes to get out of town, and Zelena’s car took chunks out of a phone booth and an old wooden bench en route, but the sirens faded eventually. Regina had put enough distance between herself and the scene, and she was finally on the road that lead up into the forest and the place she was to spend her wedding night.

Provided, of course, that Emma didn’t demand an annulment the minute she heard the news.

***

“Hey!” Emma darted across the porch the minute she saw the car approach, waving Regina down like she could mistake the only property for miles around. “I figured you’d take the scenic route, just in case… Regina?”

Regina had stopped the car and killed the engine, but her head was resting on the steering wheel. She showed no sign of wanting to make a move. It was better than not showing up at all, Emma had to tell herself, but it wasn’t exactly a great sign. She waited on the tiny driveway, kicking at the gravel. 

A minute or two later, Regina lifted her head from the steering wheel. She look exhausted, as though she’d run a marathon in the short while that they’d been apart. Emma forced herself not to rush her new bride as she finally climbed out of the car.

“Oh my God, did you get in an accident?” Emma ran to her the moment she saw the blood on Regina’s dress. She registered on the driver’s side that the paintwork was wrecked and began to panic, her heart fluttering in her chest like one of the songbirds her mother liked to keep in the gardens. “Regina, are you hurt?”

“My heart is hurting,” Regina confessed, clutching her chest and squeezing her eyes closed. “Please, don’t touch me.”

“Do we need a doctor? I can’t take you to mine, but perhaps your man Whale?”

“Emma, stop. Please, I beg of you.”

Something beyond the surface damage was wrong. Emma felt the dread trickle down her spine, fusing with the muscles of her back and making her straighten up. Standing rigid, she could barely form the words.

“Regina, what did you do?”

Regina fixed her with a desperate glare, clasped her hands together over her stomach, and looked down at her feet.

“I’ll tell you what happened. The facts, straight and true. What you do then is entirely up to you.”


	7. Chapter 7

“This is a waking nightmare.” Emma pressed her forehead against the glass of Elsa’s living room window. She’d insisted they move inside while Regina explained. Now the small house felt like a trap, the walls closing in on her by the second. “Ruby’s dead?”

“You’re not focusing on the truly evil deed,” Regina persisted. “The problem is I did this, and I can understand if you never want to see me again.”

“Why?” Emma lashed out with a fist, close to breaking the glass. “God, on our way to finding a cure for this sickness, you’ve doubled down? I don’t understand.”

“I have so few people I care about,” Regina admitted around a sob. “She murdered Jefferson for being in her way. For being my friend, when nobody else would be a true one. He died because I wanted a route into your damn party, and Ruby obviously couldn’t let it go.”

“She said nothing of our marriage?”

“The secret remains intact,” Regina confirmed. Her laugh was hollow. “I suppose that makes it easy for you.”

“What about this is easy?” Emma roared, turning on Regina. “Do you think this makes me stop loving you? Do you? Don’t you think I assumed you had hurt people, and worse? Your reputation isn’t exactly glowing, Regina.”

“None of it gave you pause?”

“It’s different. You showing up here splashed with her blood.”

“It isn’t hers,” Regina corrected. “It’s his.” She scrubs a palm across her face, the finer spray smearing. “Well, maybe some of it then.”

“I should hate you.” Emma said, closer than she intended to be when she said the words. “God, why can’t I hate you? My stupid mind is conjuring images of you lain killed by Ruby’s hand instead.”

“That was her intention, I believe. Like I said, Jefferson got in her way.”

“How am I supposed to choose? The friend who would have killed my wife, or the wife who killed that friend?”

“I think we’re trying to choose a life where we no longer face choices like that.”

“Were you scared?” Emma asked, reaching out to touch Regina’s cheek with tentative fingers. “Not when you… when Ruby threatened you?”

“I was,” Regina admitted. “And I know you didn’t ask, but once I took the gun from Zelena, I wasn’t scared anymore. I’ve spent a long time perfecting the art of firing a gun. I know I’m a good shot.”

“Okay, that makes me feel a little queasy.”

“You have to know the truth. About this. About who I am.”

“And if I want to love the dark side, too?”

“I don’t know,” Regina sighed. “I never wanted this to happen. But here we are.”

“We three,” Emma nodded towards the window, and the faintly terrifying sight of Zelena marching up the drive. “Is it a good sign that she came alone?”

***

“How did you find me?” Regina asked as her cousin barged right in without so much as knocking. She took an instinctive step in front of Emma, feeling queasy at mirroring Jefferson’s mistaken gesture so soon after it had gotten him killed. The protective instinct would not be quelled, though. 

“You don’t think I track my car? I’m not some amateur. I can’t wait to hear why it brought you to the Charming spawn.”

“Z-”

“I was surprised when you started asking about her,” Zelena continued, ignoring the interruption. “And I don’t think I’m going to like what the real reason is, am I?”

“Apparently the same reason you’ve been hiding about Ruby.” Regina took her shot. “Mother will not be happy with you, either.”

“Don’t you… an hour after you…” Zelena pinched her nose, getting some control over herself. “No, you don’t get to judge me. My past mistakes are not up for discussion here, but let me guess... You think your tawdry fling will end the war? You kiss, and everyone else will make up? Grow up, Regina. It can’t be done.”

“It can,” Emma spoke up, bold and fearless. She took up position at Regina’s side, throwing a protective arm in front of her. “It will.”

“You’ll protect the one who killed your kin?” Zelena looked less amused than during her usual taunting. If pressed, Regina would have to say she looked exhausted, and not a little haunted. “Lacks a certain nobility.”

“Ruby intended to kill my wife,” Emma delivered the words quickly but firmly. “I believe she had little choice but to react.”

“Wife?” Zelena hissed, before dissolving into a hearty cackle. “Oh cuz, what have you done?”

“We’re serious,” Regina took up the baton again. “And we won’t have our plan spoiled.”

“You’ll turn on me next?” Zelena actually looked a little impressed. “Oh God, I can’t believe this day. Ruby was so angry. I should have known better when you went to that cursed party, but you were so intent. She’s been so mad for so long, but when we were together she always said she could stand the Mills as long as we stayed within our bounds. She took invading the Charming castle very seriously, almost obsessed with it, in truth. I never did ask why.”

“It’s how her mother died,” Emma explained as the silence stretched out. “She was with my mother, and some guys broke in. No one ever found out who they were, but it was a particularly bad time, around then. So it’s always been assumed it was your men.”

“Oh.” Zelena closed her eyes, mentally filing away that last puzzle piece. “Why do you expect me to keep this secret? I could have Aunt Cora here in minutes, put an end to this preposterous idea.”

“Because you stand to benefit if we fail,” Regina has seized on the one incentive she has left for her cousin. “If our plea for peace is ignored, if the families continue to gather power and fight as they have, Emma and I will stay gone from Storybrooke and gone from New York. You’ll become the heir I was never good enough to be, Zelena. You’ll be the daughter they always wished they had.”

“You think all I want is power,” Zelena sighed. “What you don’t understand is that power is all I have left. I gave up Ruby, gave up a chance of happiness, all to stay loyal. If I don’t go after it now, then what did I ever give her up for?”

“She always seemed to hate you,” Emma said what both she and Regina were thinking.

“Oh, you really are both children,” Zelena sounded cross. “You can only hate someone that much when they break your heart. I’m afraid that’s what I did.”

“Why didn’t Graham arrest you?” Regina realized that her cousin’s presence was strange in more ways than one. 

“I was standing there without a spot of blood on me, and no weapon,” Zelena answered with a smirk. “You did me a real favor there, I suppose.”

“What are you going to do?” Emma shifted on her feet, restless and no doubt ready for a fight. Regina laid a calming hand on her back, squarely between her shoulder blades. 

“You married today?”

“Hence the white,” Regina pointed to their respective dresses. “We plan to leave town tomorrow or the day after. We’ll tell our parents from New York, and disappear from there if we need to.”

“A foolish plan,” Zelena scoffed. She hesitated a moment, staring at the blood on Regina’s dress. “After everything, you still mean to be together?”

Regina looked to Emma for confirmation. Despite their fight, despite the bloody mess of it all, she saw certainty looking right back at her. They both nodded.

“Then I’ll cover for you. Should you need it. I’d recommend leaving tomorrow, though. Someone may have seen you earlier, Regina, and it’s only a matter of time before they come looking. Send word what you want brought from the house, and I’ll bring it here tomorrow before the sun rises.”

“You would do that?”

“What else do I have left to lose?” Zelena headed for the door, swiping her car keys from where Regina had left them, and drove off into the evening.

***

“We should get you out of that dress,” Emma stated when they’d been alone a full three minutes, or possibly four. She hadn’t moved away from Regina’s reassuring touch, and she didn’t know if she could even stand to break the contact. Ever since that first meeting two days ago she had been drunk on the simple sensation of Regina touching her. Regina’s lips, Regina’s fingers, the air between them that shifted and changed for having touched Regina before Emma herself could. It left her light-headed and thirsting for more, to keep touching and taking and being kept alive by the simple fact of Regina being the person to touch her, and be touched by her.

It hadn’t been intended as a come on. Half an hour ago, Emma thought she might have to annul this hasty union, this scheme in the pursuit of having Regina to herself, when Regina should never belong to anyone. When Zelena appeared, Emma toyed with the notion that she might not see the day’s end, that the Mills would find her expendable if she cried too hard for poor, lost Ruby. That they might shoot her too, and bury her in the forest.

No, Emma had worried that of Zelena, but despite the evidence of her darkest impulses, she feared nothing from Regina. Not from the woman who looked at her like the sun rose and set with Emma’s happiness. Who made Emma want to stare down bullets and tanks and armies, just to keep Regina from suffering so much as a broken nail. Emma hadn’t forgiven fully, in fact perhaps hadn’t even started the process of understanding or forgiving at all, but it was already a certainty in her gut that she would. 

“I thought, honestly, that I might not see you again,” Regina whispered as Emma moved behind her, reaching for the concealed zipper on her dress. “That our last moment would be that last kiss by the church door. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

“Me either,” Emma agreed, letting Regina step out of the dress, clad only in the delicate white lace she’d chosen for under it. “Do you want to shower, or…?”

“A cloth,” Regina asked. “I need to clean my hands, my face.”

“Okay.” Emma took her hand and led her through to the bathroom in back of the house. “It’s a little chilly in here, but we can be quick.”

“I can-”

“Let me,” Emma soothed. “I need this too,” she added, running a cloth under the faucet and wringing it out.

“Destroy the evidence,” Regina whispered, her voice low and crackling with sadness. How could Emma hate her when she stood there so full of regret, shivering slightly in her underwear? 

“Listen,” Emma took a gentle hold of Regina’s chin with her damp thumb and finger, cloth forgotten in the other hand. “Whatever I do here tonight, I do with full knowledge of who you are. Of what we are, and what we will always be if we don’t break this cycle.”

“You’ll think me a monster,” Regina argued. “When all this cools off in a few weeks.”

“If you’re a monster, I’m no better,” Emma countered. “Had Zelena done the same, to Granny for example, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”

“I wish it undone,” Regina said, her voice a whisper. Emma kissed her, silencing the rest of the regrets. Regina kissed back with renewed hunger, finally letting herself accept that Emma meant her forgiveness. Emma knew well it would feel different in the cold light of morning, but she understood that the love bursting in her chest every time she looked at Regina, every time their lips touched, would still be as present and as strong.

Emma handed the cloth to Regina when their kiss ended, watching her trace the lines and contours of her body with its cleansing water. Stopping only to rinse the cloth and apply more soap, Regina washed with the devotion of a pilgrim, and Emma found herself kneeling as though at a shrine.

Leaning in, Emma embraced Regina around the waist and murmured reassurances against her hip. “Whatever happens, whatever they all say, I’m sure we’ve done the right thing. If this is the only way to see you like this, to see how you’re beautiful enough to damn me, Regina… it’s been worth it. Every decision. Every second.”

“I’m supposed to be the hopeless romantic,” Regina reprimanded, done with her washcloth and running her fingers through Emma’s hair instead. “But I suppose you are a Charming, after all. Your tales of true love have nauseated everyone for years.”

“Ssh,” Emma shut down the teasing. She didn’t want to think of her family and their feud anymore. She wanted the world to shrink and condense to this white-tiled room, the blankness and anonymity of it reducing the population to her and Regina. She pressed a kiss directly below Regina’s navel, dragging her lips across the exposed skin to the tip of Regina’s hip bone and delighting in the shaky gasp it drew from above her.

“Oh, Emma,” Regina sighed as Emma traced the line of her hip with gentle caresses from lips, tongue and teeth in turn. The skin there was delightfully sensitive, and Emma was already feeling like an explorer, ready to chart every sigh and sharp intake of breath that she could provoke. “Take me to bed, please?”

Emma stood on shaky legs, taking Regina’s hand, and did exactly that.

***

“You’ve exhausted me,” Regina grumbled, pushing dark hair from her face and collapsing once more into Emma’s side. The sheets were pulled haphazardly over some of their naked skin, but she was still sweating from exertion, too hot to feel any chill yet. “Will you let me sleep this time?”

“The sun will be up in an hour,” Emma sighed, restless even in Regina’s loose embrace. “I’ve been wondering if we should trust Zelena. What if she doesn’t come alone?”

“I confess I’ve worried about the same thing. My cousin loves me, I’m sure, but she also would stop at little to protect me. I want you safe even more than I want to announce this relationship of ours to the world. I fear I’ll have nothing, if I lose you now.”

“Then tired as we are, I think I should try to take myself home. You finish making the plans for night, whenever you think it’s best to leave, and send word with Granny. I’ll meet you then, and all this will be behind us.”

“I don’t want to let you go, not even for the rest of the day,” Regina told her, the words mumbled against bare skin. 

“I don’t want to either,” Emma answered. “But this will be the last time we’ll do what our families, and lying to them, demands of us.”


	8. Chapter 8

"Mother," Regina froze in the doorway, unsure whether or not there was a point to running. She felt caught, as clearly as if her mother had walked in on them in bed before Emma’s well-timed exit. “I was expecting-”

“Zelena. I know. She’s rethinking her secrecy back at the house right now. Thankfully she responds to discipline far quicker than you ever did. Otherwise I might have been late.”

“You know?”

“That the Sheriff has testimony of your slaying the Charming bitch? Yes, I’m well aware.” Cora advanced into the living room, and Regina took her instinctive few steps back. “It’s unfortunate that they can’t be silenced immediately, but we’ll take care of it before any prosecution can begin. Just as we always have.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“I’d be more impressed if you had,” Cora sighed. “Yet I knew before I even saw you that you’d apologize for the one thing that almost made me proud. You can be sure Zelena tried to take credit, but we had the city camera feeds pulled before she ever opened her mouth.”

“That she wants it so much is credit to her,” Regina suggested, trying to spare her cousin some of Mother’s wrath. “Sometimes I think she would make a better heir than I do.”

“Only because you don’t try,” Cora snapped. “I’ve given you everything, girl. After I dragged myself into this life from nothing. Don’t talk to be about how hard it is to be handed everything. I have made you a queen, but time and again you spit on the crown.”

“I should go into hiding, then?” Regina tried desperately to redirect the conversation. Mother was nothing if not protective of her kin. Focusing on an external threat made Cora far less likely to be one. “I had formed half a plan already.”

“The car is waiting outside. You’ll cross the town line, there’s a place no one should think to look. It used to be some kind of diner, I believe. You’ll wait there until we can calm the Sheriff and his goons. He’s irritated by the death of Jefferson. Apparently they were great friends.”

“Jefferson made no mention of that,” Regina puzzled out loud. “Why wouldn’t he mention that?”

“He was probably spying on you for the filth,” Cora spat. “I always told you that love, that this childish insistence on friendship, was nothing more than weakness. I should have killed him myself to get your priorities straight.”

“Mother-”

“Go, Regina. There will be no calls, no contact with anyone but me. Robin and his men are fully briefed on how to keep you safely contained. I suggest you don’t try their patience or mine. Unless a life in prison sounds appealing?”

“No, Mother,” Regina admitted. Perhaps she would have time to leave a note somewhere for Emma, under the guise of collecting her things. “I’ll go make myself presentable and-”

“No time. This is a Charming place Zelena found for you to hide in. Of all the idiotic choices… Still, there will be clothing and showers enough where you’re going. Don’t dilly-dally, darling. If we can find you, even that moron with the star badge will work it out eventually.”

“I don’t see how. Why would he look here, if it belongs to a Charming?”

“I don’t have time for insolent questions. If I did, I might start to wonder if you knew that when you came here, Regina. That is not a line of enquiry you want me to pursue, is it?”

“But Mother, I-”

“I can see the state you’re in. Whoever he is, you’d better pray I don’t find him in this house when you leave. There’ll be time to address this lapse in judgment when your charges are dropped, but I don’t advise pushing me this morning, girl.”

Mother had been advancing on her throughout the conversation, and Regina found herself backed into the corner of the room, no escape from Mother’s hand as it aimed directly for her throat. At the last moment, the tensed fingers grazed Regina’s cheek instead. She barely had time to heave a sigh of relief before Mother gripped her chin, the bruising contact light years from how Emma had touched her there last night.

“Ow!” She protested, forgetting her own rules. The slap was exactly the response she should have expected. 

“Ready to go?” Mother demanded, the threat apparent in every syllable. Regina nodded. “Robin!” Cora bellowed, summoning the well-meaning but dim security guard. He stepped in from the porch, scratching awkwardly at the stubble that didn’t suit him. “Regina is ready to go. You have your instructions.”

Robin nodded, standing straight as Cora shoved Regina towards him. He hesitated on seeing her in her nightgown, well, some borrowed one anyway. Looking at Cora for a second, as though seeking approval, he shrugged off his dark green blazer and laid it over Regina’s shoulders. It smelled faintly damp, earthy like the man himself, but Regina was glad of its warmth.

She didn’t touch her fingertips to the stinging skin on her cheek until she was safely in the backseat of the car and whizzing down the road that led out of town.

***

"I'm sick,” Emma lied, pulling the soft pillow over her head. She’d barely managed to slip under the sheets, nightgown hastily pulled over her head, before the door had swung open. “Mom, please.”

“Your father and I need to speak with you,” Mary Margaret persisted. “You’ve been hiding away in here since last night, and this cannot wait any longer. No matter what Granny says.”

“What?” Emma demanded, reluctantly emerging from under the pillow and sitting up on her elbows. At least Granny had been as steadfast as always. “Dad? Can’t this wait?”

“We’ve accepted a proposal on your behalf,” David told her. “Given the current climate, with Ruby and all-”

“You can’t!” Emma yelped. “Mom, Dad, you have to listen to me.”

“The most important thing is getting you out of here. To safety,” Mary Margaret continued. “We’ve spoken with all our advisors, and we all agree that although it’s difficult to be parted, the best thing is to find another place for you. We have to stay, to lead the company through this difficult time-”

“What?”

“Emma,” her father warned.

“You’re selling me off to some man? For protection? Worried me getting killed like Ruby might bring the share price down?”

“Emma!” Her mother yelped. “You always knew this was a possibility, if you didn’t find a man of your own volition.”

“What if I don’t want a man?”

“Enough of that nonsense,” David shut her down then. “Oh, you think I’m lost to the world of business, but I hear the chatter amongst the staff as well as anyone. Youthful indiscretion is one thing, Emma, but you won’t drag us through the mud as some overdue act of rebellion.”

“Re-rebellion?” Emma spluttered. “That’s not what this is. Who would even agree to marry me? The only boy I know who’s sweet on me is Neal, and you didn’t approve of him four years ago. Why should you now?”

“The Jones boy,” Mary Margaret supplied, her face lighting up at the possibility. “Even though you were quite rude at the party, it seems his interests are very much aligned with ours. We’ll leak a few stories about you having dated for the past few months, get you to New York by tomorrow, and once you’ve been seen together a few times, announce the engagement. Our security team will be with you at every turn, Emma. You won’t have to worry about another thing, we promise.”

“I might worry about being married off to some sleazeball with an accent problem,” Emma protested. “You can’t do this to me, you can’t.”

“This was always your destiny, Emma,” David told her. “We’re simply speeding up the process a little, to get you out of harm’s way. You can make all your own choices later, when it’s safe. The Sheriff will have the Mills girl in custody before long, but that wild cousin of hers can’t be ruled out. They think they have the upper hand, and we can’t allow that.”

Emma panicked. Not allowing that usually meant some form of revenge. That meant that Regina might not be safe, even if Zelena was a more appropriate eye for this particular eye. In her exhaustion and chaos, Emma realized she had barely grieved for her dear childhood friend. She offered a silent apology to Ruby, vowing to do so later. 

“If I take a bodyguard, can I run one errand today? It’s for Ruby. For her memory, I mean.” Emma felt awful about lying, but she knew she had a limited window. She wasn’t walking out of her life today to be with Regina, not without some drastic action on her part. Luckily, Emma had been fantasizing ways to disappear since she was a little girl, and with word to Regina to wait for her, it should all go smoothly.

“I don’t know,” Mary Margaret hesitated. “If you take Neal, Elsa and Kristof, at least, then you can visit in our side of town. No more than half an hour, and no lingering outdoors.”

“Your mother is wise,” David agreed. “I wouldn’t have allowed you even that, but we must allow you space for your grief, in this protection. The Mills will get their house in order for another attack soon, and you must be on your way to married life in another world entirely before they do.”

“Do we even know what happened to Ruby?” Emma asked. “I mean, I wasn’t there when you were told, so…”

“Granny said she told you the news before she had to excuse herself.” Mary Margaret looked suspicious for a moment. “But of course, what she thinks she did and what she did might be quite different. Grief is so terrible that way. I remember when my mother died, I didn’t know up from down for quite some time.”

“Ruby was killed by the daughter of Cora and Henry,” David supplied, and Emma felt her blood run cold. She had hoped they’d have time enough to escape. They should have fled directly from the church yesterday, she saw that now. “Though she remains in hiding, it won’t be long before a manhunt turns her up. There’s every chance Cora will sneak her to a stronghold in New York, but we’ve already alerted our friends in the NYPD. She won’t stay hidden for long.”

Emma closed her eyes for a moment, drunk on the relief that Regina had apparently not been captured. Fleeing was one thing, but escaping a prison something else entirely. It seemed that now, more than ever, Emma would have to execute a plan that got them both out of Storybrooke. For good, for better, and for worse.

“I should dress,” Emma announced, wriggling as though to get out from under her sheets. “The sooner I do my errand, the safer I’ll be. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?”

“We knew you’d understand,” David clapped her soundly on the shoulder. “You’re a Charming, after all. Even when you’re Emma Jones, of New York, as you soon shall be.”

Emma choked down the bile that rose in her throat. Whatever happened today, tomorrow and for the rest of her life, it most certainly would not be that unimaginable fate.

***

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the man said, his accent foreign as it rasped out from under his hood. The robes were not the luxurious velvet of the Friar, but closer to the sackcloth the kitchen deliveries came in. Emma swallowed her nerves and stepped further into the dusty shop, the echo of the entrance bell fading faintly as she did. “I’m told the young Miss Charming fancies herself our Savior.”

“I’m no Savior,” Emma interrupted. “I’m told you’re the man to come to, should trickery be needed?”

“You seek a little magic?”

“A potion, I believe. Something that will put me in a sleep from which it seems I cannot awake. I need to appear, to the world at least, to be dead. Only for a short time.”

“I have no interest in playing God, dearie,” the man lowered his hood, his angular face not especially unkind. Emma continued to feel wary, but his suggestion of a smile drew her closer. “No man holds dominion over death. Certainly not to cross back from it.”

“I’ve heard you can stretch the boundary,” Emma persisted. “I can pay. Name your price, apothecary.”

“Not many call me that. Not in public,” he replied. “I have no interest in coin.”

“Every man has a price.” Emma had heard her father say exactly that more than once. “What will you take?”

“A lock of your hair,” he decided. “Assuming I can accomplish what you ask of me.”

“Hair?” Emma felt uneasy. “That seems a low price.”

“Then what do you care? Accept a bargain, Savior.”

“Fine. That’s not my name.”

“It will take the best part of an hour, and you must listen to my instructions. I offer no guarantees on the folly of your plan.” He beckoned her to follow him into the back of the dingy shop. A simple gray curtain separated workshop from store, and the moment she was beyond it Emma gagged on some acrid, chemical scent. “Ingredients,” he explained, clearly amused. “Let’s just say sheep liniment has its uses.”

“You can’t scare me off,” Emma warned. “Make your potion, sir.”

“The prophecies were right about you,” he said, chuckling low and deep. “Not that I suppose you believe any of that.”

“Damn straight,” Emma confirmed. “While you work, there’s a message that I need you to relay for me, once I’ve left with your product.”

“For that I will accept your coin,” the apothecary decided. “I’ve always been quite fond of gold.”

***

“Robin,” Regina knocked on the doorframe of the small apartment. It smelled like dust and oil from the fryers downstairs, long since abandoned. “I really can’t stay here all day. If you could help me out for an hour, Mother would never need to know.”

“I’m afraid she’s my employer,” Robin told her, not looking up from the book he was frowning at. Regina wondered if he could actually read it, or was simply looking at the illustrations. “And that means her requests trump yours. Duty, and all that.”

“I’m sure you’re such an honorable man,” Regina laid it on thickly, rolling her eyes at herself. “But doesn’t that commitment to doing the right thing mean helping a damsel in distress?”

Robin shot her a look for that. Perhaps Regina had strayed too far in her little pantomime. She took a deep breath and revised her approach.

“What if I gave a note to one of your colleagues? They could make a simple delivery, surely?”

“Where?”

“Ah,” Regina hadn’t finished plotting before taking this approach. She could think only of the Friar as a halfway house, a safe haven for any message to reside. Even then it would have to be coded to avoid being read and understood by anyone on staff. Mother bought loyalty, with interest. Regina had to hope Zelena was sent to babysit her as punishment. With an ally she might still escape. “To my priest, of course.”

“Priest?” Robin scoffed. “I’m sure.”

“I killed a woman in cold blood yesterday,” Regina reminded him. “Forgive me if I request an update on my eternal damnation.”

“We’ll see. Later,” Robin dismissed her, turning the book to squint at something else. His lack of action frustrated her further, but Regina accepted her fate for the time being and retreated to the dingy bathroom and its thankfully warm shower. With a fresh set of clothes she could get back to being herself, and most importantly, get back to Emma.


	9. Chapter 9

“Make haste,” Mary Margaret scolded as she followed Emma upstairs to her bedroom. “You were gone longer than you promised, Emma. We worried terribly.”

“I’m fine.” Emma resorted to stating the obvious, clutching the metal vial that hid in the pocket of her red leather jacket. She should have worn something more discreet for the outing, perhaps, but it felt like a signal to Regina should their paths have crossed unknowingly. It was tribute, also, to Ruby. The jacket had in fact been given as a gift. Ruby had always chosen items in the color she had been named for. “I still feel quite weak though, so I’ll take myself to bed again.”

“Your fiancé will be here in a matter of hours.”

“Then I’ll greet him in the morning,” Emma sighed, knowing already she’d be doing no such thing. The fact that the title of fiancé was given so readily made her feel truly sick all over again. “It wouldn’t be proper to meet with the man after dark, would it? Think of the scandal, Mom.”

“Never mind the scandal,” Mary Margaret dismissed with a wave. “I’ll overlook my own morals if it means you get him secured into a marriage all that much sooner. Spending the night so often leads to children, and then he’s yours, dearest girl.”

“I’d rather rest. Be at my very best to see him at breakfast.”

“Very well,” Mary Margaret sighed, giving up as they approached the door of Emma’s room. She pulled her daughter into a hug, and for a moment Emma let herself get lost in the easy comfort. They so rarely had moments like this anymore. She had missed it more than she realized, and would mourn her mother’s safe embrace for some time to come once her plan came to fruition and she was in exile with Regina. “We only want what’s best for you, darling girl.”

“I’m sure that’s what I’ll have,” Emma told her, every inch as sincere as her mother. She stepped into her room, letting the door close behind her. She considered the dramatic options available to her, but with the apothecary instructed to tell Regina and the vial in her hand, Emma knew that acting quickly and decisively was her only hope of success. She crossed the room, exiting onto the balcony where her fate had effectively been sealed such a short time ago. 

Emma looked at the setting sun, and glanced at the pool where she’d dived to impress her new love, and splash her in the process. Yes, this was right. This would fool everyone long enough to let them be free, and from safety they might still end this damnable fight that no one even truly remembered the origins of. There was talk of a public slight here, a misplaced invitation there, but the years had drowned that original impulse in the monotonous immediacy of blood, and the desire to exact more blood in revenge.

Holding the little bottle up to the sunlight, Emma quickly removed the stopper and swallowed the contents in two gulps. She barely had time to toss the vial away, down towards the pool, before the world started to fade out.

The small splash was covered by the sound of her body crumpling to the hard stone.

***

Regina had paced and pleaded in alternating bursts all day. Robin remained unmoved by her entreaties, as useless as a lump of wood to her. She’d tried her charms on the other guards as they rotated positions, but they were loyal to Robin first and Cora second, making Regina’s quest too much of an uphill battle. Whenever she was left alone she sought escape routes, leveraging windows and looking for cellar doors or secret panels. Unfortunately, the previous diner owner and occupant had been downright pedestrian in their housing needs. If wishing alone could change anything, Regina would have burned a hole in the walls and walked right through it.

Missing Emma was bad enough, but the lack of a concrete plan was weighing on Regina just as heavily. If Zelena were to confess the whole story of Regina’s actions these past days, Emma was as good as dead. Maybe not right away, but Mother had a habit of eliminating distractions. She was relieved beyond measure then, when Zelena came rushing through the apartment door a little while after the sun had set.

“Cuz!” She yelled, pulling Regina by the arm into the small bedroom and ignoring each of the guards as they passed them. Zelena had always been so dismissive of those she called the little people. Regina had never understood that attitude until that very night. “Oh Regina, I am sorry to be the bearer of such terrible news. First, as concerns your person, Graham has issued a warrant. He’s spoken with Aunt Cora and Uncle Henry, saying he’ll make sure it doesn’t go statewide or national, providing you never set foot in Storybrooke again.”

“What about a trial?” Regina demanded. “Am I to be thrown before the firing squad without anyone caring that it was self-defense? God, I can’t stand this town of tattletales and vigilantes. Maybe exile will be the freedom I’ve been longing for. We just need to find a way to get to Emma, and… Z? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Exile isn’t the pressing news, not when you’re already over the town line,” Zelena said, sorrow in her voice. “It seems we are to be as sisters, again. We are bonded by a loss, yours mirroring mine.”

“Zelena?”

“I come with news the Charming girl has succumbed to some unknown illness. She complained of illness this morning, and the house is in chaos tonight as she’s been found dead in her bedchamber.”

“No. You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie?” Zelena snapped, glancing back at the door, making sure no guards had come to eavesdrop. 

“Revenge?” Regina suggested. “You cared for Ruby, you’ve confessed as much. Or Mother’s orders? God if this is true, tell me that neither of you did this to Emma. Promise me right now you had no hand in this.”

“It’s true, and it is not at the hand of anyone in the family” Zelena snapped, and Regina could see the genuine sorrow again beneath the irritation. Her cousin had never been a great actress, and the wariness with which she watched Regina suggested she expected a real reaction to genuine and tragic news. “I’m only sorry to be the bearer of this message.”

“She can’t…” Regina struggled for words, and a moment later for air. She couldn’t seem to compel her lungs to breathe, and she staggered towards the room’s sagging bed. As she slumped onto the mattress, Zelena was there, patting her back until a shuddering gasp of air forced its way out. Regina gulped more air in gratefully, unable to focus on anything but that simple act and the drumbeat of _no, no, no_ that sounded in her head, the pressure feeling like enough to burst. 

“They’re to bury her tomorrow, late afternoon. Obviously we can’t attend, but I’ll send a spy if there’s some trinket you want to leave in the crypt, maybe?”

“Like my wedding ring?” Regina felt the first sob forming in her throat. “Because she won’t have been wearing hers. At least, I assume she wouldn’t risk it at home…”

“We’ll think of something. Aunt Cora means to have you moved in the morning, cuz. You should rest until then. If you can’t put a brave face on, we’ll call it remorse over Ruby. No one will look too closely if you only mourn Emma in private.”

“Right,” Regina answered dully. Without Emma she had no plan, no escape, and no kind of future that interested her. As quickly as she’d fallen for the Charming girl, a new plan formed, whole and simple. Regina took her cousin’s hand, squeezing it gently. “I suppose you were right. These foolish plans never work. Would you take the guard tonight, dear? I can’t bear dealing with one of Mother’s brutes between now and morning.”

“Of course,” Zelena agreed. “I was going to anyway. You’ll call me in if you need anything?”

“There’s nothing I need,” Regina replied. “Let’s just hope sleep claims me and spares me from these next few hours.”

***

Regina had never dared run before. She had thought about it many times, used trickery and the sheer numbers of staff to buy herself a few hours, but an heiress Houdini she was not. She did know her cousin though, that Zelena had never been able to stay awake through the night. Sure enough after a couple of hours there’s a regulation of her breathing outside the door that says she’s slipped into a sitting form of rest. 

As for the guards, Regina had been aware of them moving around her like a macho ballet for her entire life. She knew their patterns and their formations, when one face would trade for another. She knew which ones were always being reprimanded for unscheduled breaks, and who had a fondness for bourbon when stuck with night duty. Luckily both of those men, John and Will, were on the detail Mother had selected. Clearly she didn’t pay as much attention to their work ethic as Regina had over the years.

There was a limited window of time, a little after five and before the sun had risen. She heard John stumble as he left his post beneath the window, and Will was still in the living room with Robin, if their continued low mumbling was any indication. Zelena slept on, and Regina eased the window whose hinges she had greased with a leftover bottle of cooking oil she’d found in a cupboard earlier in the day. She lowered herself as quickly as she could, swallowing a gasp of pain as she made contact with the rough exterior of the building. Luckily, she landed on grass and when she stood to bolt, it was without injury. 

She’d made it to the safety of the treeline, panting slightly as she watched Will stroll into position, rubbing his hands against the morning chill. It wouldn’t be long before someone checked on her, if only to look competent, so Regina knew she had to find a good hiding place for the rest of the day. She’d find out for sure if the news about Emma was true, and decide on a new plan from there. Something deep in her gut made her suspect the news, even if she was sure that Zelena hadn’t been lying; perhaps the one breaking the news to her cousin had been the liar. 

Regardless, Regina knew she had to find a place to lie low. She’d risk a visit to the graveyard only after dark, and whatever she decided it wouldn’t be the worst idea to lay her hands on some cash. Any use of cards would have to be a one-time big withdrawal right before disappearing, and she couldn’t risk that yet. She picked her way through the trees, listening all the while for shouts that meant her disappearance had been discovered.

When she emerged on the other side of that stretch of forest, tired and thirsty, Regina realized the nearest place of safety was Jefferson’s. With no family to go through his things, his house should be relatively undisturbed, and full of useful supplies. She pulled the hood on her jacket up once more, and raced the sunrise to her new sanctuary.

***

Gold sat with his first drink of the day, rubbing his injured leg as he considered the note. He knew that his knowledge of the Charming girl’s plan could make him very popular in Storybrooke, and make him a wealthy man if he played his cards right. He also knew that there was some value in delivering the note that Emma had left him for none other than the daughter of her family’s biggest rivals. He’d read it, of course, and knew that he’d be receiving another visit any moment as a result.

“Gold?” Came the Friar’s voice from the back door about half an hour later. “I wonder if we might talk a while?”

“I can’t solve all your problems,” Gold replied, pouring another cup from the pot anyway. “Let me guess, you fear your little wedding stunt yesterday has lead to the tragic death of the young Emma Charming, hmm?”

“How do you know about that?” Archie looked stricken as he eased into the chair opposite gold. “I was sworn to secrecy, not even my Bishop knows.”

“Let’s just say I was involved too,” Gold answered, considering the note in his hand one last time before whisking it into the fire that burned low in the grate. “These stories of heirs dying have been told for many years, Friar. You know that’s what it will take to end this rivalry. Not a wedding, not this idiotic notion of true love conquering all.”

“I had hoped…”

“Unburden yourself then,” Gold decided that more detail couldn’t hurt. He’d find a way to blackmail both sides to keep the Friar’s secret, especially Cora Mills. She hated little so much as she hated being the last to know something, and to avoid that she’d spend her husband’s money with abandon. “But make haste. A Charming funeral is always a spectacle, and I don’t want to miss any of it.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Oh God,” Regina gasped, her knees giving way and sending her tumbling to the floor beside Emma’s prone form. It had been easy to break into the crypt, in the end. Apparently the gravediggers didn’t lock them the first few days, expecting family members and grieving lovers at any kind of odd hour. The trail to Emma’s body had been marked in petals, snow white but crushed by countless footsteps on them.

“Why are you here?” Came a male voice from somewhere behind her. “I have never seen you at the Charming house.”

“You wouldn’t,” Regina grunted as she tried to stem the flow of tears, wiping roughly at her face. “But my name is no business of yours. You look like a pirate, recently come to port.”

“I’m in mourning,” he gestured to his clothes. “The leather is black?”

“Color alone doesn’t make it appropriate,” Regina snapped. “Leave this place.”

“I don’t think so. This girl was to be my wife.”

“Interesting,” Regina couldn’t resist. With Emma dead before her, she would surely join her in a matter of moments. Did it matter whether it was at her own hand or because this caricature of a man killed her? “Because I think you’ll find she is already mine. Wife, that is. Word must not have reached her parents of our union.”

“What nonsense,” he stepped forward, clearly unnerved by her claim. “Why would she agree to be promised if she were married already?”

“It’s called maintaining your cover.” Regina stood once more, raising herself to her full height and revelling in the fact that he took a step back. “Although perhaps when she realized she would be forced to marry you anyway, bigamy be damned, her body decided it was better to die than live and be pawed at by you.”

“I don’t like striking a woman, but I will.”

“I dare you,” Regina advanced on him then, making him stumble and fall in blind panic. “Oh. Not exactly a match for me, are you? All that money of your brother’s has made you soft.”

“I know your face,” he spat, picking himself up and dusting himself off. “You’re the Mills girl, aren’t you? No wonder you hate me on sight. Your mother made all the overtures the Charmings did, although she added in that the whole ‘chaste until the wedding night’ crap was optional when it came to you. I had to turn you down though, love. Got to think about the optics, and voters always go for a rosy-cheeked blonde.”

“You’re running for office?” Regina couldn’t resist the fight now, not when it might be her last. “I didn’t know New York needed a new dogcatcher. You could be the first to be fired for incompetence.”

“Mark your words.”

“I don’t believe I will.” Regina was confident in her argument, well-honed at all forms of sparring over the years. Her resolve crumbled though as she turned, setting eyes on Emma once more. Emma drained of life and promise, still as beautiful but already gone. Regina shrugged off her quarrel and took up her place once more on her knees, holding her dead wife’s hand and quietly noting that it wasn’t so cold as she had hoped. “If you won’t leave,” she threw the words over her shoulder at Hook. “Then you’ll be my witness.”

She leaned in and kissed Emma. First on the forehead. Secondly on the tip of her nose, the silliness of the act bringing a wry smile to Regina’s lips. Finally, she pressed one brief, final kiss to her wife’s lips, before leaning back and letting the tears flow. Regina hid her face in her hands, the sobs overpowering now and she had no strength to hold them back. She carried a knife in her pocket, and reached for it then. 

She’d sooner end it here than go and face her mother. Even in exile, confined to New York or somewhere else, she’d be back on the leash and under control. Perhaps now they’d even step up her coronation within the company, to show off their heir when the Charmings had none. Yes, Regina realized, that was exactly what Mother’s next move would be.

“My God!” The imbecile behind her called out. “I thought true love’s kiss was an old wives’ tale!”

Regina ignored him, sobbing into her hand and grasping her knife with the other. Another moment and she’d find the courage. Another moment and she would be with Emma for eternity. Or at least not forced to spend the rest of her life a corporate puppet, mourning her one chance at freedom and happiness.

“True love what?” Said a croaky voice. Regina’s head snapped up in shock.

“Emma?” She gasped.

“Last time I checked,” Emma sassed right back, propping herself up on her elbows. Regina registered then that Emma had been buried in the dress she’d worn to their wedding, and it looked even better in this unexpected, miraculous moment. “What’s with all the crying, wife?”

“She is your wife!” The moron yelped. “Good lord, I’ve been taken for a ride. Wait until your father hears about this.”

“Excuse me one moment,” Regina squeezed Emma’s hand, partly to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Then she stood once more, strode across the room and buried the knife from her pocket in the chest of the moron in black. He fell theatrically, as she had expected, and Regina left him groaning on the floor.

“Well,” Emma sat the rest of the way up. “You’re certainly effective.”

“We’ll make our escape, darling,” Regina sat beside her, laying a gentle hand on Emma’s cheek. “I came here to die by your side, but somehow you’ve tricked us all.”

“A drug that mimics death,” Emma explained. “Didn’t the apothecary send word?”

“Apothecary?”

“If we return here in the future, remind me to do to him what you just did to my unwanted suitor,” Emm replied. “My god, Regina. I’m so glad you’re here. There’s nothing and no one I would rather wake up to.”

“I feel much the same.”

“How are we going to explain the body?” Emma nodded towards the man on the floor. “And the sudden absence of mine?”

“He won’t die,” Regina sighed. “I made sure to avoid the heart. He’s just a drama queen.”

“You’ll still need a cover,” Zelena said, stepping in from the crypt’s entrance. “Since neither one of you can accomplish even the simplest plan. It takes a true mastermind to engineer such deception. A wicked one, at that.”

“Cuz,” Regina greeted her. “You’re not here to bring me to Mother?”

“No, but even she will work it out soon enough. You’re lucky no Charmings have come here tonight. There’s word spreading around the town like wildfire of your forbidden love. Apparently you’ve been sneaking around since you were 14. The townspeople are quite taken with the romance.”

“What can we do?” Emma pleaded. “Please, I can’t go back to them. They always think they know best, and I’ll be wed to that Jones idiot one way or another.”

“You’ll leave. I brought a car with no tracker,” Zelena explained. “There are clothes, some basics you might need. And all the cash I could find in your room and mine, Regina. You did everything but stuff the mattress with it.”

“I always knew I’d have to escape one day,” Regina sighed. “Emma’s right though, there’s no explanation that will suffice.”

“You, grief-stricken Regina, came here to take Emma’s body from the prison of her family crypt. I chased you once I realized your plan, but came across you too late, carrying her out into the sea. You drowned, it will be assumed. So determined were you that you would be together at all costs.”

“That’s…” Regina began.

“Brilliant. I’m aware,” Zelena sighed. “I’ll shut the pretty boy up, too. I’ll take him to Whale before he manages to find a way to die. Although if he opens his mouth, I’ll make sure the blade finds heart muscle on my thrust.”

“Okay!” Jones whined from the stone floor. “I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Poor dead girls. Tragic story.”

“We can really do this,” Emma pulled Regina to her, kissing her soundly on the lips. “Zelena, Ruby would have been proud of what you’re doing for us. I know she would.”

“No, she’d have been as angry as she was about everything else,” Zelena sighed. “Although I’d like to think a small part of her would like to see you getting a chance where she couldn’t.”

“What do you say, Emma?” Regina stood, extending her hand in question. “I know marriage is commitment enough, but this means a new life without all these riches, without every comfort you’ve ever known. All you’ll have is me, at least at first.”

“That’s the commitment I made,” Emma told her, standing and taking that hand in both of her own. Their joined hands loomed over what was a deathbed no more, and Regina nodded in quiet acceptance. “All my life I’ve only ever known what was wrong, but now I finally see what’s right, and I’m going as far as you’ll take me.”

“I love you.” Regina brought Emma’s hands up to her mouth and kissed them.

“I love you, too.” Emma’s smile was radiant enough to light the crypt had its unsettling torches failed. “But Zelena, please tell me there’s water in those supplies? I feel like I’ve been inhaling dust for days.”

“There is,” Zelena confirmed. “Who wants the keys?”

“Me.” Regina caught them deftly, glaring at Emma’s look of disdain. “I think the driving should be left to the wife not just resurrected, don’t you?”

“Very well,” Emma groaned. “We’ll take our leave.”

“Goodbye, cuz,” Regina embraced her difficult cousin with genuine love and unspoken thanks. “I’ll find a way to write. You’ll know it’s me.”

“When it’s safe,” Zelena scolded. “You’re always too quick to act. Now go, so I can dump this sorry soul and make for the harbor to spin my lies.”

“We won’t forget this,” Regina promised.

“I don’t suppose you will. Be happy.”

“We already are,” Emma answered, leading Regina by the hand into the cool night air.


	11. Chapter 11

“This won’t work,” Regina complained as they ascended the stairs from the lobby. “No matter what the papers say, these joint events are nothing but PR.”

“PR is what makes it safe for us to reappear,” Emma pointed out, weary of explaining her plan again. “They have to be overjoyed in public, and from there we simply refuse to be separated. They’ll see the PR potential.”

“What’s PR?”

“Public relations,” Regina explained, pausing and bending down to address their son. “Do you know what that means, Henry?”

“It means Grandma and Grandpa,” Henry answered, quite solemnly. “And Gran and Grandad. And Granny.”

“Sort of,” Emma ruffled his hair as she chuckled. “Remember how your bedtime story goes, kid?”

“Sure, once upon a time,” Henry began.

“No,” Emma corrected. “Your bedtime story for big boys.”

“Right,” Henry hit his forehead in annoyance, much to the amusement of his mothers. Regina stood, smoothing invisible creases from her navy shift dress. “Two house holes,” he began again, frowning as Emma dissolved into laughter.

“Stop laughing,” Regina ordered with a smirk, swatting at Emma’s arm but only brushing the tan leather with her fingertips. “Henry, we’re going to meet the rest of your family in just a minute. But if anybody seems angry, we’re just going to leave, okay?”

“Because they’ll be in time out?”

“Something like that,” Emma replied. “Let’s go. The signing is in here, judging by the number of camera flashes.”

“We’ll be fine?” Regina didn’t mean to phrase it as a question, but Emma answered it anyway.

“We will. They put those statues up just last month to a lasting peace. Storybrooke has never been calmer, and even here in the city they’re not the public spectacle they used to be. We ended the feud, Regina. It’s just a shame they had to think they’d lost us. Now, are you ready to come back from the dead?”

They stood in the doorway, where Regina caught Zelena’s eye. She was standing behind Mother, and allowed just a flash of a smile in recognition. 

“We can’t all have as much practice as you have, dear,” Regina said calmly, taking Henry’s hand and watching as Emma took the other. “Let’s go have our family reunion.”


End file.
